Cold
by Mia Cooper
Summary: AU: J/C, J/P, a smidgen of K/T, VOY crew, plus a few others. Secrets are remembered, a deception is revealed, and Kathryn Janeway learns the consequences of sacrifice. Sequel to "Erasure". (Complete)
1. Part 1 - Present Tense

**Book Four: Cold**

 **Summary**

Secrets are remembered, a deception is revealed, and Kathryn Janeway learns the consequences of sacrifice.

 **Notes**

This story is part of a parallel universe series, and a sequel to Erasure. It will make a lot more sense if you read that story first, but if you'd rather get straight into it, here's a recap of the story so far:

Captain Chakotay's Starfleet crew and Kathryn Janeway's Maquis have merged into one crew aboard the Federation starship Voyager, stranded 70,000 light years from their homes. Voyager successfully used the Sikarian spatial trajector to travel 13,000 light years closer to home, but has just come out of year of battles with the time-tampering Krenim and is currently searching for some of its lost crew. Now, Voyager has discovered a chance to communicate with home, but someone on board has her own agenda.

 **Addendum**

As the reset button has not been pushed in my universe and the _Year of Hell_ actually happened, the current location of Voyager at the start of this story is roughly equivalent to that in _Random Thoughts_ (mid-way through Season 4), but the crew has only been in the DQ for a little under two years (or approximately where _Cold Fire_ occurred in the series timeline).

 **Codes**

J/C, J/P, a smidgen of K/T

 **Disclaimer**

Most characters and some dialogue and situations belong to Paramount, with a bit of cherry-picking from Jeri Taylor's _Mosaic_. Any dubious science or technobabble is entirely my responsibility.

 **Related episodes**

 _Message in a Bottle, Hunters_

 **WARNING**

This story contains some violence, allusions to non-consensual sex, and some sexual content. It is rated a very strong M. Please do not read further if this offends you, or you're under 18. I have edited it to some degree to fit within ffnet's ratings guidelines. If you want to read the original, NC-17 version, please go to archiveofourown dot org or trekiverse dot org.

=/\=

 **Cold**

 _by Mia Cooper_

 **1\. Present Tense**

 **\- September, 2373 -**

 _Personal log, Ensign Seska Miko, stardate 49062.8. I started cross-training in Engineering today. Lieutenant Torres assigned me to shuttle maintenance under Lieutenant Nicoletti. Considering the rate at which some members of this crew destroy, damage or misplace shuttles, I'll probably be there for the next sixty years, or however long it's going to take us to get home. I'm a pilot. I should be flying shuttles, not tinkering with them. I know we're in a unique situation and we all have to pull together and I signed on for this when I joined Starfleet but ... it can be so lon- so, uh, isolating. I wish ... oh, never mind. End log._

I lean back in the comfortable chair and half-close my eyes, relaxing. I have been undercover before, though never for as long as this, and always before there have been times of escape, whole days or even weeks when I could disappear, let the mantle of my assumed personality slide away and be myself again. This role I have been playing for eight years now is a second skin, and shucking it off is no longer easy.

"Computer, replay log." I listen with a critical ear to my performance – it is convincing, if I do say so myself. A young Starfleet pilot, thrown light-years from her home, struggling bravely to contend with the privations of a long and dangerous journey. I save the log and ask the computer to dim the lights.

There are many things I detest about being on this Federation starship. The endless backup procedures and safety measures which mean every task takes twice as long to complete; the do-gooder morals which require us to answer every pathetic distress call; the short-sighted and self-defeating adherence to the vaunted Prime Directive. But, and I know it sounds ridiculous, the thing I hate most of all is recording my personal log.

We Cardassians value our privacy. The very notion of recording my thoughts and feelings and the mundane details of my day, to be stored in the ship's computer and accessed by senior staff whenever they feel the need, is complete anathema to me. The fact that these are the thoughts and feelings of the displaced young Starfleet officer I appear to be and not really mine is scant comfort. Over the years, she has become a part of me; I have learned to think as she would, feel as she might. It can make my task difficult at times, but it is also why I am so good at what I do.

=/\=

When Janeway and Paris had been rescued from the Krenim weapon ship, sixty-six of the Voyager crewmen evacuated several months ago had still been missing. Of those, thirty-eight had since been located. Four had been confirmed dead – Boylan, Crag, Nozawa and Platt. Four were discovered on a barren L-class world – Rollins, Molina, Ashmore and Andrews, who had been dazed when Voyager found them, explaining that one minute they'd been prisoners in the Arkaan camp and the next every Arkaan guard had vanished, along with the prison itself. Anderson and Mendez, whose escape pod Ensign Culhane had seen vaporized by Arkaan fire, had reappeared at their stations on Voyager when the temporal shockwave hit. As saddened as she was by the loss of the three species who'd helped Voyager, Commander Janeway was not overly sorry to discover that the temporal reversion had also wiped out the Arkaan.

Twenty-four were still missing, and Stellar Cartography was working overtime to map their possible courses. Janeway had assigned Ensign Kim to work with Ensign Megan Delaney on boosting the astrometric sensor array. Thanks to the increased sensor capabilities, they had succeeded in detecting the subspace transponder signals of several of the other missing escape pods, and Voyager was on its way to collect more of its absent crewmen.

They had also made contact with the Rilnar, who had informed them that in this timeline Annorax was a footnote in history, a brilliant temporal physicist whose experiments had nevertheless failed repeatedly, who had eventually been expelled from Krenim academia and had lived out the rest of his life on a long since abandoned colony world. The Rilnar, despite their understandable skepticism of Voyager's story, had provided safe haven while they repaired the damage from Annorax's attack, helped them replenish their supplies and sent them on their way. Kathryn Janeway could not help but wonder how different things would be now if Voyager's temporal shields had not been reactivated when the space-time shockwave hit. Sometimes, in the long dark insomniac hours, she wished bitterly that she could obliterate the past year from her memory. Perhaps, if she could, she'd be able to sit in her comfortable chair on the bridge without wanting to disappear.

=/\=

"Approaching the coordinates." Lieutenant Paris' voice, toneless, broke the silence that had held on the bridge since Chakotay handed it to his first officer and went to his ready room to catch up on reports.

"Captain to the bridge," Janeway said, equally inflectionless.

Chakotay emerged and took his seat. "Open hailing frequencies," he ordered, and at Kim's nod he went on, "Voyager to escape pod 47-alpha. Lieutenant Carey, Ensign Brooks, respond."

~Carey here, Captain!~ came the excited reply. The scene that followed – the transport of Carey and Brooks, the reunion with their closest friends and colleagues, the exchange of stories – was a variation on the theme that took place every time they rescued another of the missing, but Voyager's crew never tired of it.

Neelix determined that each rescue was cause for a party, and as first officer, Janeway knew she was expected to attend each celebration in the mess hall. It was unfortunate that despite the easing of her heavy heart each time they brought back another member of the family, she had never felt less sociable in her life.

She was unenthusiastically pinning up her hair in readiness for the party marking the safe return of Bristow, Lewis, Swift and Jurot when Chakotay came to her door. "I thought we could go together," he explained.

She nodded. "What time are we expected?"

"Not for a while." He settled himself on her couch without asking. "I was hoping we could talk for a bit first."

"About what?" She perched warily on the opposite end.

"About what happened to you on the Krenim ship," he said carefully.

Her face went blank. "It's all in my report," she answered after a pause.

"I don't think so, Kate," he said, gently. "Something's been weighing you down since you got back to Voyager. Did Annorax hurt you?"

"No." She conceded that that was not the entire truth, and clarified, "Not physically."

'You were on that ship for eight months," he went on. "I know you were in isolation for the first few weeks. Then you tried to gain Annorax's confidence by working with him on temporal calculations, but didn't succeed. Tell me what happened after that."

"After that," she answered tonelessly, "as I noted in my report, Tom – uh, Lieutenant Paris befriended Obrist, the first officer, and attempted to convince him to stage a mutiny. Before he could complete that mission, Annorax simulated an attack on Voyager and convinced us that he had destroyed it."

He was watching her with dark and sympathetic eyes. "And you continued in that belief for almost four months, until Obrist informed you Voyager hadn't been destroyed."

"Yes."

They were quiet for a while. Finally Chakotay spoke. "I can't imagine what you went through, Kate."

She said nothing.

He tried another angle. "You saw a counselor after the loss of the Galileo. Unfortunately, we don't have one on this ship, but I'd like to help you if I can. If you don't feel comfortable talking to me, perhaps one of the other crewmembers would suffice. Kes, maybe, or the Doctor. Or, if you'd prefer to talk with someone who shared the experience, maybe Lieutenant Paris …" He trailed off. She had risen from her seat and was standing at the viewport, staring out. If he'd been a casual observer he might have thought she was at ease, but he'd never been a casual observer where she was concerned. He could see the tension in her shoulders from halfway across the room, could see that her hands were clasped, white-knuckled, behind her back. He didn't know how to bridge the distance between them.

"Kate?"

She spoke without turning. "I'm sorry, Captain. I have a headache. May I be excused from attending the party?"

"If that's what you want," he answered. "But remember I'm here if you need me."

"I will," she said, and he let himself out.

=/\=

Tom Paris, knowing his presence was expected at the parties Neelix threw for the returned crew, had nonetheless taken to avoiding them as far as he could by volunteering to help in the kitchen. Occasionally Neelix asked him to pass around canapés or serve drinks, but as often as he could, he retreated to the galley where he could stir pots and stack plates in relative solitude. Small talk and smiling were two talents he seemed recently to have lost, and he figured it was better for everyone if he wasn't forced to attempt them. Besides, he wasn't just hoping not to be seen, he was hoping not to have to see her.

Luckily, she appeared to have begged off this shindig. Her absence helped somewhat to loosen the tense muscles cramping the length of his spine. Tom wasn't sure if his physical tension was an effect of his insomnia or part of the cause; all he knew was he hadn't had a good night's sleep in weeks. He felt numb, dazed; displaced. Working the helm with her sitting a few feet behind him was torment, but when he gratefully ended a shift and returned to his quarters, he found no respite there either.

Harry Kim came into the kitchen carrying a stack of empty plates. "Thought I'd find you here. Neelix is going to start thinking you've made a career change if you're not careful. Come on, I'll buy you a drink."

"No thanks, I'm good," Paris replied automatically.

Kim assessed him for a minute. "Want to get out of here? I have holodeck time saved. We could go skiing?"

"No thanks," he said. "I'm good."

"Sure," Kim answered. "Keep telling yourself that. Maybe you'll eventually believe it."

Tom couldn't even be bothered to retort.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Kim demanded, keeping his voice low in case Neelix overheard. "Ever since you came back from that timeship you've been walking around acting like a Vulcan. You and Commander Janeway both. The bridge is about as fun as a Klingon painstick ritual these days. What happened to you?"

"Nothing," he answered. "Everything's fine. See you later, Harry."

He'd got as far as pulling on the sweatpants that served as pyjamas and climbing into bed for what he knew would be another wakeful night when the door to his quarters chimed. Perhaps the last person he expected to see when he opened it was Tuvok.

"Lieutenant," he said blankly. "Is there a problem?"

Tuvok indicated in the negative. "May I enter, Mr Paris?"

"Make yourself at home."

Tuvok settled on a chair and Paris took the couch opposite. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"I am hoping it is more what I can do for you," the Vulcan replied. "I have observed that since your return from the Krenim vessel, you appear to be distracted by private concerns."

Tom's mouth hardened into a flat line. "Do you have any complaints about the way I'm performing my duties?"

"None," Tuvok replied. "My concern is for your mental and emotional wellbeing. I have no wish to intrude. However, I may be able to offer some assistance."

Paris felt chastened. "How?"

"I am practiced in a range of Vulcan meditation techniques, some of which can be adapted to allow other species to assert some control over their emotional states. If you are willing, I can guide you through such procedures."

 _You're acting like a Vulcan_ , Harry Kim had said, and Paris had wished fervently that he could sublimate his emotions the way Vulcans did. Well, here was his chance. "When do we start?"

=/\=

"How's the cross-training program coming along?"

Alpha shift had long since ended and Chakotay and Janeway were in his ready room going over status reports. The cross-training had been Tuvok's idea; he'd proposed it as a contingency plan if Voyager were ever to be left with minimal crew complement again. Neelix and Kes had been first to volunteer, claiming they'd benefited greatly from learning new skills during their year of hell. Janeway had worked with Tuvok to draw up a shift roster. "Pretty well, all things considering," she answered. "Everyone can see the benefits, even if some don't like being out of their comfort zones."

"Any more developments on finding our missing sheep?"

"Nothing yet. I'm heading to Stellar Cartography when we finish here."

"Keep me apprised." Chakotay keyed his PADD off. "Hungry?"

"No, thanks. I'm fine."

He levelled a look at her. "At the risk of sounding like the Doctor, when did you last eat?"

She sighed. "All right, you win. Mess hall?"

"Here will do." Chakotay went to the replicator and returned bearing fragrant plates of chicken biryani, knowing she was partial to it. She picked at it listlessly. "How are you doing, Kathryn?" he asked in as mild a tone as he could muster.

"I'm fine, Captain."

"It's Chakotay," he reminded her gently. "We're not on duty now."

"Right. Chakotay." She put down her fork. "I'm sorry, I can't." She scraped back her chair. Chakotay stood with her. Whatever he'd been about to say was cut off by the chirp of her commbadge.

~Kim to Janeway. Please report to Stellar Cartography.~

"On my way."

"We've picked up a signal," Kim told her when she entered the lab. "One of the subspace beacons. It's about thirty light years away, but it appears to be near a quantum singularity. We're having trouble isolating the beacon's location through the gravimetric interference, and we can't get a comm signal through."

Janeway moved to the console between Kim and Delaney. "Have you tried compressing the signal?"

Kim nodded. "It starts to degrade when it gets too close to the singularity. And we've reconfigured the sensors about as far as we can. The singularity is emitting gamma-ray bursts and there's too much interference to get a clear lock on the beacon's location."

Janeway was staring at the display screen. _Subspace instabilities and gamma-ray emissions_. Somewhere, a memory was stirring.

"Tachyons," she burst out, suddenly.

Kim and Delaney looked at her, uncomprehending.

"Modulate the deflector array." The words came quickly now, tumbling over each other in her haste to crystallise the memory. "Tie it into the sensor grid and send out a series of tachyon pulses. They'll bounce off the quantum singularity. We can map the tachyon echoes and pinpoint the beacon's location."

Kim was staring at her, open-mouthed.

"Do it, Ensign," Janeway suggested, and he turned back to the console to carry out her orders. Within a few minutes the subspace transponder signal appeared steady and unblinking on the astrometric display.

"There it is! It's the shuttlecraft Tereshkova," Kim said. "Wow, Commander, how did you come up with that?"

"It was just something I remembered," she said softly, and he could tell she wasn't really talking to him. "Something from a lifetime ago."


	2. Part 2 - Past Simple

**2\. Past Simple**

 **\- June, 2360 -**

Her very first day on the job, and Ensign Kathryn Janeway was late.

Kathryn the precise, Kathryn the punctual. She checked the chrono again and moaned in frustration. Her internal alarm system was often an annoyance to her; it contributed to her frequent bouts of insomnia, denied her the pleasure of luxuriating in bed of a morning, and forced her to dawdle, solitary, in cafes and parks and lecture halls, waiting for tardier friends. But the one morning she really could have used it, the damn thing decided to take a holiday.

Dragging an arm through one sleeve, she gulped at her coffee, snatched up her PADDs and hurtled into the corridor. She was still fastening her uniform as she stepped out of the turbolift into the science lab, skidding to a halt in front of the duty officer. "Ensign Janeway reporting for duty," she said quickly, hoping she didn't sound too breathless.

The dark-eyed human woman in lieutenant commander's pips regarded her mildly. "Good of you to join us, Ensign. I'm Laura Marshall. You'll be reporting to me. This is Ensign Dhyl nar Zorok," she indicated the goggle-eyed, peach-skinned Nhorvian male, whose oversized head bobbed on a spindly neck. "He's our resident neutron star expert, and has been with us for close to a year now. And this is Lieutenant Justin Tighe, our engineering liaison." Tighe nodded unsmilingly at Janeway, who couldn't help standing a little straighter, hoping her hair wasn't falling out of its braid, as she suspected. His dark blue gaze travelled over her; he seemed to be assessing her and finding her wanting. Flushing, she tilted her chin up.

Commander Marshall gave her a brief update on their project and then Janeway settled herself at a terminal beside the skinny Zorok. It seemed only minutes later that she heard his glottal voice speaking her name. "Time to eat," he explained when she stared at him.

She'd been utterly engrossed in her first set of analyses; had barely moved, in fact, and was now paying the price. Wincing, she stretched her aching neck and followed Zorok to the mess hall.

She was peppering him with so many questions about the project that she didn't notice until they'd taken their seats that there was already another person at the table. Kathryn stopped mid-sentence and found herself smoothing her hair behind her ear. God, Lieutenant Tighe made her nervous. "Good afternoon, sir," she said, subdued.

He nodded and continued eating in silence. She noticed that his gaze roamed the room, his dark blue eyes never still. She glanced around, wondering what he was looking for, and when she looked back his eyes were on her. Kathryn cleared her throat. It was fortunate that Zorok chose that moment to comment on the meal.

The next few weeks were a blur of sensor analyses and sometimes heated theoretical discussions. Their mission was to study rotation rates and gamma-ray bursts from massive compact halo objects. Zorok had completed a doctorate in the topic and was clearly the most knowledgeable, but Kathryn had spent the past two years since her graduation from the Academy studying various stellar phenomena and found she had her own opinions on the topic that sometimes differed from Zorok's. Commander Marshall encouraged their discussions and often raised suggestions that set them off on further theorising, but Janeway noted that Lieutenant Tighe rarely stirred himself to get involved. She wasn't really sure what his role was in the project.

The Al-Batani, a deep-space science vessel, was heading for Starbase 718 near the Bhironi system, a group of planets near the edge of the Romulan neutral zone. The small binary neutron star they were on their way to study was a little over a dozen light years from the starbase. As they drew closer to the starbase, Janeway's job was to monitor the gravimetric pulses and identify any risks to the ship caused by the star's energetic jets. She was alone in the Astrometrics lab, well past the end of her shift, engrossed in her analyses when a voice spoke behind her.

"Ensign Janeway?"

She jumped. Turning, she came face to chest with a command-red uniform and a pair of silver pips. She raised her head.

 _Whoa_ , she thought, and hoped like hell her reaction wasn't written on her face. Her visitor had dark chocolate eyes, mocha skin and a pair of dimples providing punctuation marks to a blinding white grin. "Sir," she said, straightening automatically.

"At ease." He sounded amused, and held out a hand for her to shake. "Lieutenant Chakotay," he introduced himself. "Chief helm officer. I'm piloting an away mission tomorrow and need to map a route to one of the planets in the Bhironi system. I'm told there are subspace instabilities in the region. The Captain suggested I talk to you." The dimples deepened. "I need your help, Ensign."

"Yes, sir," she said, wondering where her breath had gone. She turned back to the control panel, pulling up a map of the Bhironi system on the display screen, and he stepped up beside her. "Uh, which planet are you going to?"

"The third one." He indicated it. She tapped into the scientific sensors and overlaid the image with the gravimetric map she'd created. "The binary star is here," she pointed. "You can see the gamma-ray ejections have destabilised subspace to varying degrees around it. The third planet in the system isn't as seriously impacted, probably because the asteroid belt surrounding it deflects some of the gamma-ray bursts, but you're right, you'll have to navigate around any newly-forming subspace instabilities. The problem is, the neutron star is highly active and it's difficult to predict the strength and direction of the pulses."

"Any idea how I'm going to pilot through that mess without getting everyone on the shuttle vapourised?"

"Maybe," she said slowly. "If you modify your shuttle's deflector dish to emit continuous low-grade tachyon pulses, the tachyons will reflect off the gravimetric instabilities and you'll be able to use the echoes to navigate a path through them."

"Looks like I came to the right place." The pilot was grinning at her. "You've just made my job a whole lot easier. Can I buy you a drink to say thanks?"

"Oh. I, um," she stammered, then pulled herself together. "Thank you, sir, that would be nice."

"I think we can stand down on the formalities," he said. "Call me Chakotay."

"Okay," she said. "Nice to meet you, Chakotay. I'm Kathryn."

=/\=

"Ensign Janeway," Commander Marshall greeted her when she reported for duty three days later. "Captain Paris has asked you to attend the briefing room in half an hour."

"Me?" Kathryn paled a little. "Uh, may I ask why?"

"The mission to Bhironi III was a success. I believe Lieutenant Chakotay claims your assistance was invaluable." Marshall smiled. "I'm pretty sure the Captain wants to thank you. You can relax, Kathryn. You did a good job."

Entering the briefing room, she quailed a little as the eyes of everyone around the table turned to her. "Ensign Janeway," the Captain boomed, standing to shake her hand, then giving her a quick hug with his other arm. "It's good to see you again, Katie."

"Thank you, sir," she smiled. "It's good to be here. My mother sends her regards."

"Next time, tell her to send some of her brownies," he grinned, and waved her to a seat. "Lieutenant Chakotay there tells me you're the one who saved his away team's bacon out there. Well done, Ensign."

"Thank you, Captain." She kept her gaze politely on his face, trying not to be distracted by Chakotay smiling at her from the opposite end of the table.

"Good. Well, we're going to need your assistance again, as it happens. You'll be joining the away team on the Tesla tomorrow. Report to Shuttlebay Two at 0700 hours."

"Sir?"

"Chakotay has your mission briefing. Dismissed," Paris said gruffly, and everyone around the table filed out.

"Come on," Chakotay said, nudging her out of the room behind the others. "I'll fill you in."

They went to the Astrometrics lab and Chakotay instructed her to call up the map of the Bhironi system. "This is where we're going," he told her, indicating the fourth planet.

"The subspace instabilities are considerably more intense in the region of that planet," she observed. "It's closer to the binary star and not so protected from the gravimetric shear."

"That's why we need you. You'll be monitoring the gravimetric pulses from the science station on the shuttle and keeping me informed of any imminent danger. I'm going to have my hands full navigating and keeping us in one piece, so I'll be relying on you to help guide us."

"Why are we going there?" she asked. "I thought only the third planet was inhabited."

"Officially, yes." Chakotay paused. "I'm authorised to tell you this because you're coming on this mission, but you'll need to keep it classified. You're aware that Bhironi III has only been a Federation member planet for about five years?"

She nodded.

"Not everybody on the planet was overly keen to join the Federation," he explained. "A secessionist movement has been gathering strength over the past couple of years, and after they made a number of attacks on the Bhironi parliament, they've been declared terrorists. Two weeks ago, a small party of secessionists infiltrated Starbase 718. They've taken two Starfleet officers hostage and are holding them on the fourth planet. Our mission is to secure their release."

Kathryn's eyes widened.

"The Al-Batani will take us back on board as soon as we've cleared the solar system, but the ship can't enter the planetary area. It's too big to navigate the subspace instabilities. Don't worry," he assured her. "You'll stay on the shuttle while the rest of the away team beams down. Part of your job will be to monitor our signals and transport us back to the Tesla along with the hostages, once we've rescued them."

She couldn't help swallowing hard. "Will it be dangerous?"

"It's possible. We'll try for a peaceful resolution, of course."

"Who else is on the away team?"

"Lieutenant O'Day and Lieutenant Tighe."

O'Day made sense; he was the ship's tactical chief. "Why is Lieutenant Tighe going?" she asked, unable to suppress a small pang of anxiety. This mission was going to be challenging enough without Tighe's unreadable eyes boring into her back. "He's an engineer."

Chakotay shrugged. "Captain's orders. Are you okay with this?" he asked her. "If you're not confident, I can ask the Captain to assign Ensign Zorok."

At that, she raised her chin and gave him a glare that made him laugh and hold his hands up in front of him. "I surrender," he grinned.

"Don't worry about me," she told him coolly. "Just because I wear a blue uniform, doesn't mean I don't know how to handle myself."

"I have no doubt of that."

She flushed a little at the undercurrent in his voice. If she didn't know better, she'd swear he was flirting with her.

"Well," she said briskly. "Thank you for the briefing, Lieutenant."

"You're welcome, Ensign." The dimples were on full wattage. She'd given him an exit, but he wasn't going anywhere.

 _Definitely flirting_. Kathryn didn't know where to look.

"So," she said brightly. "Have you been on many rescue missions before?"

"A few," he acknowledged. "My last posting was seven years on the Clement under Captain T'Meni. We had our fair share of encounters with some less than friendly species. The Breen were probably my favourites. Charming people. Then there were the Ferengi, and the Tzenkethi …"

"You're only a few years older than I am," she observed. "How have you been in Starfleet so long? You've seen so much." She couldn't help a twinge of envy.

"I graduated eight years ago," he answered. "I was fifteen when Captain Sulu sponsored me for early admission to the Academy."

"I'm impressed," she admitted. "What made you join up so young?"

"I couldn't wait to get off my homeworld." He laughed, but she realised his eyes weren't smiling. "I come from the Dorvan system, way over near the Cardassian Union. My people aren't big on technology, and I never really fit into their chosen way of life."

"Well." She smiled up at him. "Their loss is Starfleet's gain."

"Thanks," he grinned. "So. You know the Captain?"

"The Parises are family friends. My parents used to host them for dinner occasionally."

"Starfleet brat," he teased her.

"Guilty."

Chakotay's commbadge chirped; the Captain had summoned him to the bridge. "Gotta go, _Katie_ ," he teased her, and then he turned back and looked at her for a long moment. Under his gaze, she felt her spine begin to tingle. His voice was softer when he spoke again.

"Kate," he said, as if he was trying the word out, then smiled. "It suits you."

=/\=

 _You can do this_ , Kathryn pep-talked herself as Chakotay ran through the pre-flight checks. _Monitor the sensors, keep a lock on the away team while they're on the surface, beam them up. Simple_.

The shuttle cleared the bay and set a course for the solar system, and Janeway's trepidation eased into anticipation. She'd never had a chance to get this close to a binary neutron star before. The Al-Batani had to hold position at least two light years from the object in case its gravimetric pull began to destabilize the ship's structural integrity, but the Tesla, with its much smaller mass, could approach much closer. Their flight plan would take them along the outskirts of the Bhironi system, passing within a few billion kilometres of the star and looping back around toward the fourth planet. If she found she had the time, she could take some closer readings of the neutron star, maybe even watch it spurt out an energetic jet with her naked eye. Ensign Zorok would be jealous, she thought, smiling to herself.

She set the deflector to emit the measured tachyon pulses and transmitted the sensor map to Chakotay's navigational terminal. "Pulse series initiated," she reported.

"Acknowledged," he replied. "Engaging at half-impulse."

They flew in relative silence for awhile, broken only by Janeway's status updates and her occasional warning to avoid an area of potential volatility, and Chakotay's notifications of course corrections. As they approached their entry point to the Bhironi system, Lieutenant O'Day spoke for the first time. "Ensign Janeway, I assume you're aware of your responsibilities while the rest of us are on the surface."

"Yes, sir. I'll maintain a transporter lock on the away team and initiate transport on your command."

"See that you do," he told her dourly. "I'm aware this is your first mission that doesn't involve faffing with telescopes and looking at pretty lights, but I hope your duties won't be too taxing for you."

For a moment Kathryn couldn't believe what she'd heard. A slow burn rose up the back of her neck. Then she heard a soft snort from the engineering station and whirled around to see Lieutenant Tighe hiding a smirk behind his hand. It was the first sign of a smile she'd ever seen from him, and it was at her expense. Humiliated, she opened her mouth to tear a strip or two off him, O'Day and anyone else who felt like underestimating her, and then caught Chakotay's eye. He shook his head at her, infinitesimally, and the pause gave her the moment she needed to collect herself.

"I'll do my best not to disappoint you, sir," she told O'Day through gritted teeth, and the rest of the flight to Bhironi IV was spent in silence.

"We're in orbit," Chakotay said finally, and Janeway silently breathed a sigh of relief. The tension inside the shuttle had swelled to the point she'd started to develop a headache, and she couldn't wait for a little time alone.

Tighe ran a few scans and determined the optimal beam-in coordinates, and the away team dematerialised. Janeway dutifully tied the targeting scanners into the away team's commbadge signals and slumped back in her chair. "What an ass," she muttered, then turned to her sensor readouts. The subspace instabilities around the fourth planet were stronger and formed more frequently than those in the course she'd helped Chakotay plot to Bhironi III, and she needed to stay alert and be prepared to ease the shuttle out of orbit if necessary.

She wasn't expecting the away team to check in for a few hours; Chakotay had told her the negotiation with the terrorists might take some time. But barely half an hour had passed before her commbadge activated.

~O'Day to Tesla, respond!~

Kathryn almost jumped out of her seat. _Was that phaser fire_? She tapped her commbadge. "Janeway. Go ahead, Lieutenant."

~We're taking heavy fire. Get us out of here now.~

Fingers shaking, she tapped the controls. "Initiating transport."

Five figures began to materialise on the shuttle's transporter pad. And then her sensor console beeped a warning at her. Janeway whipped around to check the readings. A gamma-ray burst had been ejected from the neutron star. A subspace disruption was forming a few million kilometres from the shuttle and was producing gravitational eddies. She turned quickly back to the transporter pad. The figures were starting to lose cohesion.

"Oh, shit," she whispered. _Think, Kathryn_. She tapped into the transporter controls. "Narrowing annular confinement beam," she said aloud, the sound of her own voice steadying her. "Boosting power to pattern buffer…"

Four of the five figures crystallised and solidified, and Chakotay, O'Day and the two hostages came to life on the pad. The fifth was still a hazy cloud of matter particles.

"Report," barked O'Day, stepping off the pad while Chakotay helped the rescued officers to their seats.

"I'm having trouble rematerialising Lieutenant Tighe," Janeway answered him, trying not to panic. "A subspace distortion –"

O'Day cut her off. "Get him back."

"I'm trying, sir," she said, hating the quaver in her voice. "His pattern's been disrupted by the gravitational instability …"

Suddenly, she knew what to do. "Sir," she addressed O'Day, "I need you to reroute power to the phase transition coil. Give it all the juice you can find."

He didn't move. Kathryn couldn't believe it, but she didn't have time to waste on him. "Do it," she snapped. She could worry about insubordination reports later. Right now Tighe's life was at stake.

To her relief, O'Day moved to the engineering station. "Transferring power from the plasma relays."

Janeway checked her console and nodded. "Phase transition coil stabilised. I'm remodulating the gravitational compensator." She tapped in a command and checked the transporter pad. Nothing; Tighe was still dazzling particles of light. "Trying again," she said through clenched teeth. This time, when she looked at the pad, she saw the engineer beginning to materialise, then fading again. "I need power to the energising coils," she called.

Chakotay had moved to the helm. "Transferring power from impulse engines."

That did it. Tighe materialised fully on the pad, blinking in disorientation. Kathryn locked the transport down and bowed her head. Her hands were shaking.

"Rough ride," Tighe said tersely, stepping down. "What happened?"

"A gravitational disruption almost scattered your signal," she told him, trying to keep her voice steady.

"Ensign Janeway here just saved your ass," Chakotay informed him.

Lieutenant Tighe turned to look at her. For the first time his dark blue gaze didn't make her feel like she was wearing her clothes backwards. She thought there was maybe even a little respect in his eyes. He nodded, abruptly. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," she said faintly, and turned back to her sensor panel.

=/\=

"Is O'Day always such a pompous old targ?"

Chakotay laughed. "That's a pretty accurate assessment. He's a good tactical officer, but he doesn't suffer fools gladly." He saw her frown at the implication, and hastily added, "Not that you're a fool. I'm just saying it's best to stay on his good side."

"Huh." Janeway glared into her Denobulan starburst. "Seems to me someone needs to teach him an etiquette lesson."

"What are you planning?" Chakotay asked suspiciously.

An impish smile curled the corners of her mouth. "Have you ever attended one of O'Day's tactical training exercises?"

"Sure," Chakotay said. "He runs them regularly for his security team, but the senior officers are required to get involved at least once a month."

"So, you're probably reasonably familiar with the equipment he uses?"

"You could say that," Chakotay answered carefully. "Why?"

"I have an idea." She tugged at his elbow, grinning. "C'mon. Let's go take Lieutenant O'Day down a peg or two."

=/\=

"Juvenile, irresponsible, destructive and unbecoming of a so-called Starfleet officer! And don't try to deny it was your handiwork."

Ensign Janeway wondered if Lieutenant O'Day's shiny bald head might be about to detach itself from his shoulders and go spinning into orbit. The pulsing in the veins on his temples certainly appeared to be approaching critical velocity.

"No, sir, I won't deny it," she answered him serenely. "It was me."

She had been called on the carpet by O'Day less than an hour after his tactical training exercise had begun. She had reconfigured the simulation phasers to spurt out replicated streams of coloured paint rather than photonic energy pulses, and within minutes of the simulation beginning, it had ended in abrupt disarray.

She was quite proud that she'd programmed each paint jet to correspond to the astrometric pattern of the Bhironi system. She wondered if he recognised it, and if so, whether he appreciated the subtlety. Looking at his irate red face, she guessed the answer was no.

She looked at him placidly as he continued to berate her. O'Day had taken the time to change his uniform before he'd had her summoned to the Captain's ready room, but she noticed there was still a streak of magenta paint on his left earlobe.

Captain Paris's face was composed in stern lines, but Kathryn could have sworn there was a twinkle in his eyes. "What do you have to say for yourself, Ensign?" he asked her gruffly.

She stood at full attention. "Sir, I have nothing to say for myself. Only that I apologise for my juvenile and irresponsible actions, and for any damage or embarrassment Lieutenant O'Day has suffered as a result."

"Very well. Report to Deck Eight, Section 12, and bring cleaning solution. You'll scrub that paint off the walls until they're spotless. Then consider yourself confined to quarters until your duty shift tomorrow. Dismissed, Ensign."

"Sir," she said smartly, and turned on her heel. She noted that O'Day looked even more incensed; apparently the Captain's chosen punishment did not, in his opinion, fit the crime. As the door closed behind her, she heard Captain Paris say to O'Day, his voice rich with suppressed laughter, "Oh, settle down, Nathan. She's just a kid. And by the way, you missed a spot."

=/\=

"You shouldn't have taken all the blame," Chakotay grumbled. "I was in on it too."

They'd planned to eat in the mess hall together, the day after the paint incident; Kathryn's duty shift had just ended and he'd stopped by Astrometrics to collect her.

"You're a senior officer," she pointed out. "I hardly think Captain Paris would have let you off as easily as he did me. There are some advantages to being a lowly science ensign."

"Well, I owe you one." He grinned at her. "I can't help feeling like you got the fallout and I got all the fun. Watching O'Day get covered in paint was a treat."

Kathryn laughed. "Buy me a drink and we'll call it even."

"I'll buy you two," Chakotay promised.

She raised an eyebrow, leaning against her console. "Planning to get me drunk, Lieutenant?"

"Oh, no. I think you're capable of enough mischief without adding alcohol to the mix."

"Well," she said slowly, "there was this one time at the Andromeda Bar when I was at the Academy …"

"Go on."

"An Andorian cadet challenged me to a drinking competition, which I naturally accepted," she told him, her eyes full of laughter. "It was only after the fifth drink, when I realised I was completely tanked and she was barely showing any signs of intoxication, that I remembered Andorians have an incredibly high metabolic rate. She was metabolising the alcohol at a rate I couldn't hope to keep up with. I never stood a chance."

"What happened?" he grinned.

"Oh," she reddened, "let's just say it didn't end well for me. There was dancing. On tables. Uh, without a whole lot of clothing."

Chakotay burst out laughing. "I take it back," he said, letting his gaze travel casually from her head to her toes. "I _am_ planning to get you drunk."

Kathryn wondered if her entire body was blushing. "I stick to a maximum of two drinks these days," she retorted. "If you want to see me naked, you'll have to try a whole lot harder than that."

It was only when the laughter in his eyes changed into something else, something that made her feel a little light-headed, that she realised what she'd said. "Noted," he said, smiling slowly.

She busied herself fiddling with her jacket so she didn't have to look into those hot-chocolate eyes again. "So, uh, are we going to the mess hall or what?"

"After you." Still smiling, he gestured for her to precede him.

She'd just started to put her gaffe out of her mind and relax when Lieutenant Tighe approached their table and instantly her back stiffened. Despite her successfully recoalescing his atoms on the Bhironi IV mission, he had remained a tense and humourless presence in the Astrometrics lab, and she still had no idea why he was even on the team. "Lieutenant," she greeted him warily. Politeness impelled her to offer, "Would you like to join us?"

"No, thank you, Ensign." He seemed to contemplate her for a moment. "I heard about your phaser alterations. Lieutenant O'Day isn't exactly your biggest fan at the moment." She could have sworn his mouth twitched a little.

"At the risk of insulting a senior officer, I'd have to say the feeling is mutual."

"Well, I doubt he'll underestimate you again. And neither will I."

She stared at him. "Um, thank you. That's good to know, sir."

To her even greater surprise, he held his hand out, clearly expecting her to shake it. "I'm transferring to another starship tomorrow. Before I leave, I wanted to tell you it's been a pleasure working with you."

She took his hand automatically. "It has? Uh, I mean, thanks. Sir."

"Goodbye, Ensign," he answered, and walked straight back out of the mess hall.

Kathryn turned her gaze back to Chakotay. "A pleasure working with me? He's barely spoken two words to me in the past. Any idea what the hell that was about?"

He'd watched their conversation with unreadable eyes, and now he quirked the corner of his mouth at her. "If you haven't figured it out, Kate, there's not much point in me telling you."

=/\=

The Al-Batani had been ordered to return to Earth for upgrades and maintenance, to be followed by the long trip to study a proto-nebula near Starbase 621, along the Tzenkethi border. Kathryn was confused; surely they hadn't learned everything they could from the binary star near the Bhironi system, and surely maintenance could wait a little while until they had? "Orders are orders," Commander Marshall had told her calmly when she questioned it.

Despite her scientific disappointment, Kathryn had to admit she wasn't overly upset about leaving an area of space so close to the Romulan Star Empire, but then again, she knew there was also tension between the Federation and the Tzenkethi Coalition. There had been conflict between them in the past, and she'd heard speculation that another war was brewing. There were plenty of proto-nebulas to explore within the safe confines of Federation space. Why would the Al-Batani make such a long trip to study one on the edge of a trouble spot?

Reading back over the Al-Batani's recent missions, including this most recent one which had turned out to be a hostage rescue, she realised that the majority of them, while apparently scientific in purpose, occurred in hotspots or locations close to the Federation's borders. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but the more she read, the more she wondered. But she was just an ensign, and one in a blue uniform to boot. Who was she to question Starfleet Command?

For the first time in her life, she wished she could sit at the briefing table with the senior officers and find out what was really going on. She was envious of Commander Marshall's place at the table; most Starfleet ships did not have a scientist on the senior staff, but as a scientific vessel – _allegedly_ , she thought – the Al-Batani did.

Not for the first time in her life, or the last, Kathryn Janeway found she could not let go of her curiosity.


	3. Part 3 - Present Progressive

**3\. Present Progressive**

 **\- October, 2373 -**

My name – my real name – is Miyana Idan.

From childhood, I was destined to become an agent of the Obsidian Order. My parents, both high-ranking agents themselves, ensured that I was trained in the use of a wide variety of munitions, close-range combat and weapons techniques, computer manipulation, piloting various spacecraft, interrogation procedures and covert surveillance, among other skills. At the age of fourteen I expressed an interest in serving my people by manner of covert infiltration, and so began my training in the additional skills necessary to become an undercover operator.

My first covert mission, at the age of sixteen, was to pose as a Klingon serving girl in the house of Councillor K'Roq, the Klingon diplomatic envoy to Cardassia Prime. I was tutored in the Klingon language, surgically altered, and sent in to ascertain whether K'Roq or members of his house were engaged in activity that could undermine the sovereignty of the Cardassian Union. Naturally, I was not the only agent placed in the House of K'Roq; the mission was a test of my capabilities. I passed with flying colours, having seduced Krell, son of K'Roq, and discovered that he was engaged in the blackmail of several members of the Detapa Council.

On my next two clandestine missions I comported myself with such success that the Obsidian Order determined my skills were sufficient to undertake a longer-term, more dangerous mission. And so, a Bajoran genetic tag was implanted within my chromosomal DNA, my features were surgically transformed, a credible backstory was created for me, sponsorship from a Starfleet commander the Obsidian Order had, unbeknownst to him, compromised was arranged, and I entered Starfleet Academy.

My mission was threefold: to gather non-specific intelligence that could be of interest to Cardassia; to identify and act upon minor threats to the Union without revealing my true identity; and, at such time as the Obsidian Order determined it was necessary, to use my position to carry out additional directives. I sent regular and detailed reports to my handler during my years at the Academy and the two years I spent aboard the USS Melinche after my graduation, and hoped that they were of some use. However, until I was assigned to the USS Voyager, I had received no instructions other than my standing orders.

To my surprise and gratification, it was my mother who conveyed the Order's new commands. Since the accord between Cardassia and the Federation had been signed, the Maquis terrorists, initially a minor annoyance, had been gaining strength and had attacked a number of Cardassian assets. The defection to the Maquis of one Starfleet command officer, Kathryn Janeway, and her commandeering of an experimental and heavily-armed Federation starship, had begun to tip the balance unsatisfactorily in favour of the terrorists. My orders were to ensure the destruction of the USS Liberty and the capture, and transport to Cardassia Prime, of its captain. This last, my mother emphasised, was of great interest to her personally.

It was the last time I spoke to my mother, for shortly after Voyager's entry to the Badlands in search of the USS Liberty and Kathryn Janeway, the entity known as the Caretaker interceded, and I now find myself far from Cardassia and adrift from the orders of my superiors.

I am a professional, of course, and in the absence of my ability to carry out my mother's orders, I must maintain my cover. In the first days of the merging of the Voyager and Liberty crews, I volunteered to supplement the medical staff; Voyager had been assigned a chief medical officer, a junior doctor and a number of nursing staff, all of whom were killed in its journey to the Delta quadrant. I used my position to implement a number of protocols in both the ship's computer and the Emergency Medical Holographic program. Despite the genetic sequencing I underwent, which ensures that only a level-one chromosomal diagnostic would uncover evidence of tampering in my genome and potentially identification of my suppressed Cardassian biology, I programmed the computer and the EMH to overlook any anomalies in my medical scans and explain them away as a by-product of Orkett's disease, which I claimed to have suffered as a child.

In the absence of guidance from the Order, and accepting the unlikelihood of this ship ever returning to the Alpha quadrant, I have determined that my primary mission now is to escape Voyager and wreak as much devastation on it as possible in the process. I almost succeeded. The Krenim temporal displacement vessel offered not only my opportunity to carry out that mission, but potentially to use its weapon to alter the balance of power in this quadrant of space. I allowed myself to hope that, if I could gain control over the weapon, I might discover some way of obtaining technology that could enable it to travel to the Alpha quadrant. I imagined the temporal weapon in the possession of the Obsidian Order, and all the power it could bring to the Cardassian Union. I imagined my mother's pride, should I achieve that goal. And, though Cardassians do not believe in an afterlife, I imagined that somehow, my years-dead father would also know of my achievements, and be proud of me.

Then my plans were thwarted by Captain Chakotay's phased plasma weapons. In itself, that was frustration enough, but I learned something else from my surveillance of his conversation with the Vulcan. I knew about the Federation's covert intelligence agency, of course; it is the height of naivety to imagine that any great power would not have such an asset, even if I had not been informed of Section 31's existence during the early days of my training. It had not seriously occurred to me, however, that Section 31 might have stationed one of its agents on Voyager. I berated myself for this lapse in judgment, and determined that I would need to be additionally cautious in my activities from this point forward.

Cautious - but not fearful. Fear and other impractical emotions are not an indulgence I can afford. Nevertheless, I fear now that I may never see Cardassia, or my mother, again.

=/\=

As Voyager approached the coordinates where the Tereshkova waited near the singularity, Ensigns Kim and Delaney worked double shifts, continuing to scan for the fourteen crewmen who remained missing. Commander Janeway took a personal interest in helping them when she could, with the Captain's blessing, which had the added advantage of removing her from the bridge for long stretches of her regular duty shifts. She was in the lab when Megan Delaney called, "Commander, I think I've found something."

Janeway was at her side in an instant. "Is it one of the pods?"

"No sir." Delaney tapped the console, enlarging the section of the star map that showed their route to the Tereshkova. "It looks like a series of interconnected relay stations. They're ancient and appear to be abandoned, but they're still functioning." She ran another scan. "That singularity actually seems to be powering one of the relay stations."

Janeway was gazing at the astrometric screen. "That network is vast," she said. "I wonder if we could tap our sensors into it. We'd be able to scan space for thousands of light years." She tapped her commbadge. "Janeway to Chakotay. Captain, I think you should come down to Stellar Cartography at your earliest convenience."

"What's the problem?" Chakotay asked as he entered the lab a few minutes later.

"No problem." Kathryn looked more animated than he'd seen her in weeks, he noticed. "We've found a relay station in close proximity to the Tereshkova. It's connected to an alien sensor network that appears to extend over hundreds of sectors, possibly even to the Alpha quadrant. We may be able to relay our sensors along it and scan a much wider area of space than we'd ever thought possible. It might even help us find a faster way home."

=/\=

Tom Paris stared into the flame emanating from the small lamp on the table in front of him and tried to slow his breathing, the way Tuvok had been teaching him. Their meditation sessions over the past two weeks had been effective in taking his mind off his emotional state – at least, while Tuvok was actually there, guiding him. He wasn't finding it quite so easy when he tried to meditate on his own. As for when he was on the bridge … Well, he couldn't exactly close his eyes and focus on an imaginary flame when he was supposed to be piloting a starship.

"The flame is the chaos at the centre of my being," he tried, aloud. "The lamp controls the flame, as I control my emotions."

 _Her hair falling over her shoulders as she moved, astride him. The heat in her eyes. The feel of her skin._

"I control the flame," he said, louder. "I can observe it burning. It is part of me, but separate …"

 _Her crooked smile, her hand against his face, the way she'd stand on tiptoe to kiss him. Her lips on his. The taste of her._

"I control the – _Fuck_ ," he spat. He kicked out in temper and the table rocked, the lamp falling to the floor, its light extinguished. Tom dropped his head into his hands.

What he needed was a distraction.

He couldn't face the thought of actually having a conversation with anyone, and the holodeck seemed to have lost its attraction. _Work_ , he thought. _I could just work_. He could go down to Stellar Cartography and help refine their course to the array and the Tereshkova – no, bad idea. She was probably down there. He could help Neelix in the galley, except she might come into the mess hall. He needed something he could do in the last place she'd ever voluntarily go.

Five minutes later he was strolling into Sickbay.

"Mr Paris," the EMH greeted him with some surprise. "Are you injured?"

"Not this time, Doc." Tom leaned on a biobed. "Actually, I just came to see if you could use some extra help. I have basic field medic training."

The EMH picked up a medical tricorder and began to scan him.

"I said I'm fine," Paris pointed out, with some annoyance.

"Oh, I know what you _said_ ," the Doctor replied archly. "I'm scanning for evidence of recent brain trauma, alien possession, anything that might explain your sudden and unprecedented interest in a nursing career."

Kes came out of the Doctor's office carrying a tray of cell cultures, which she placed hastily on a shelf when she saw Tom's expression. "I could use some help," she offered, drawing him toward the medical lab. "I was just about to remodulate the microcellular scanner. Could you monitor the readouts for me?"

"Sure." Paris shot the Doctor one last irritated look and followed her over to the lab. The EMH retreated to his office, and a moment later they heard him singing an opera that Paris, unsurprisingly, didn't recognise.

They worked in companionable silence, broken only by Paris' recitations from the console display when Kes asked. When they'd finished, Kes handed him half of a pile of medkits, taking the other half for herself, and told him they needed to be checked to ensure they were fully stocked.

"So, how are you, Tom?" Kes asked in her soft voice when they'd begun. "I haven't seen you in awhile."

"That's a good thing, right?" He smiled at her.

"Only if I'm referring to you as my patient, not my friend." She smiled back. "We haven't really talked since before you were taken hostage on the Krenim ship."

His back stiffened instantly; Kes noticed. "I'm sorry," she said. "I guess it's a painful memory for you."

"Yes," he answered, and then something made him add, "and no."

Kes knew when to stay silent; she simply looked at him with gentle blue eyes that held no judgment, no expectations. He found himself saying, "For a while, when I was on that ship, it was the happiest I've ever been."

"You loved someone," she realised, and he stared at her, hard. "Were you reading my mind?"

"No," she assured him. "I don't have that kind of telepathy with non-Ocampans. Was it someone on the Krenim ship?"

He paused. "It was someone with me on the Krenim ship, yes."

Kes immediately divined the meaning behind his careful phrasing, and her eyes went wide. "Oh," she said with bottomless sympathy. "Oh, Tom. I'm so sorry. It's over?"

"Yeah," he said, turning away. "It's over."

After a moment he felt her gentle hand on his arm. "I'm here," she told him. "If you ever need a friend."

=/\=

~Kim to the Captain.~

Ensign Kim's voice was bubbling with excitement. Chakotay touched his commbadge. "Go ahead, Harry."

~Captain, you need to come to Stellar Cartography immediately. There's something you need to see.~

"On my way." Chakotay looked at his first officer. "Care to join me, Commander?"

"Yes, sir." Janeway followed him into the turbolift.

"We managed to link our sensors into the alien grid," Kim explained eagerly when they arrived at the lab. "We've been running scans of the entire network for the past week, and we've found that it extends around the galactic core, through the entire inner segment of the Beta quadrant and right to the outskirts of the Alpha quadrant. During the most recent scan, we detected this."

He tapped a few keys and a section of the large astrometric display screen zoomed into view. A slightly fuzzy image of a ship appeared. Chakotay stared. "Is that …?"

"Yes sir." Kim was beaming. "It's a Starfleet ship. The vessel we're seeing is in the Beta quadrant, on the edge of Romulan space. It's within range of one of the outermost relay stations in the network."

"It must be on a deep space mission," Janeway murmured. "Can we send a message along the network?"

"We can try," Kim grinned. "I'll remodulate the signal to match the network's interlink frequency." He entered a few commands and nodded at Chakotay.

Hardly daring to breathe, Chakotay said, "Starfleet vessel, this is Captain Chakotay of the Federation starship Voyager. We are in the Delta Quadrant, at coordinates one eight mark two five mark four seven. Remodulate your signal to match our interlink frequency."

"We're receiving a transmission," Kim reported.

"Let's hear it."

A garbled mess of static came through the comm system. Janeway caught a few words. _Voyager_ … _Delta quad … Remodulate … frequency_.

"What happened?" she demanded.

Kim shook his head in frustration. "I don't understand. My readings show that the station picked up our message and relayed it across the entire network."

"Try widening the subspace bandwidth and sending the message again," Janeway ordered.

"Transmitting." Kim stared at the readouts. "The signal is being relayed … Wait, it's being deflected back again."

"The carrier wave must be degrading," she said. "We could try a different kind of signal, something stronger. Ensign, how long do we have until the ship moves out of range?"

"Approximately six hours," Kim replied. "Captain, Commander, I might be able to come up with a compressed datastream that could cut through the interference. I'd need to work with Lieutenant Torres."

"Do it," Chakotay ordered, and Harry Kim hurried out of the lab and down to Engineering.

=/\=

"B'Elanna!"

Torres stuck her head out from her upper-level office in Engineering and peered down the ladder that Harry Kim was climbing urgently and with a lack of grace. "What on earth?" she asked.

"I need your help. _Now_ ," he emphasised.

"What's going on?"

"We need to find a way to contact the Starfleet ship before it moves out of range."

"The what?" Torres' eyes went wide. "What Starfleet ship?"

"In the Beta quadrant. We need to write a program to compress a datastream –"

Torres held up a hand. "Take a breath, Harry. You detected a Starfleet ship? Through the alien array?"

"Right," he nodded. "Our transmission was deflected because the carrier wave degraded. I think I can come up with a stronger signal, but I need your help."

"Okay." She stood for a moment, mentally sifting through options and discarding them. "Okay, wait. We need to encode the datastream within a photonic carrier wave. The integrity of the program should be stable enough to enable it to cut through the interference." She turned to her station, then turned back. Harry was smiling at her. "What?" she asked, a little defensively.

"Just … You're amazing." His smile widened.

"I know." She grinned back. "Now get to work, Ensign."

"Yes, ma'am." He moved beside her. "I'll write the datastream program. You construct the carrier wave."

"You got it." Torres moved to clear her console display and begin work on the photonic carrier wave, but Kim stopped her with a hand on her wrist. "What's that?"

He was looking at her display panel.

"That? Just a routine scan of old backup logs. I was purging the database of irrelevant data."

Kim pointed. "What's that anomalous reading?"

Torres looked more closely. "Huh. Looks like a glitch in the power grid on Deck Seven." She checked the timestamp. "It occurred several months ago, while we were in the nebula hiding from the Krenim. Hardly surprising. So many systems were down then. The log could be corrupted."

"There's another one there," Kim indicated. "That one happened on stardate 49043.6, the day we destroyed the weapon ship."

"Okay, that's weird," Torres conceded. "Voyager's systems were functioning at full capacity by then. Maybe something happened during the battle?"

"Maybe." Kim's brow was creased. "It just feels like something isn't right."

"We don't have time to worry about it now," she chided him. "How long do we have to get this message transmitted?"

"Less than six hours." Kim shrugged it off. "You're right - we can look into it later."

Two hours later they had constructed a communication program encased in a photonic buffer. Kim tapped his commbadge. "Kim to Bridge. Captain, we're ready to proceed."

~Transfer the program to the Ops station and get up here as fast as you can, Harry,~ came Chakotay's reply.

=/\=

"Message ready," Kim announced, still a little breathless from his race to the bridge. "It may take some time to travel across the network. I wouldn't expect an immediate reply."

"Open hailing frequencies." Chakotay stood. "This is Captain Chakotay of the USS Voyager to the Federation starship occupying sector 542 of the Beta quadrant. We are currently located in the Delta quadrant. We are using an alien sensor network to transmit this message to you." He paused. "A little under two years ago, we were pulled into the Delta quadrant by a sporocystian entity. We have been trying to return home ever since. We have encrypted our ship's logs within this datastream so that you can study them and convey them to Starfleet Headquarters. We will move to a position near the relay network and await your reply." He stopped again, then finished. "We're very much looking forward to hearing from you. Voyager out."

"The message is being transmitted," Kim reported. "It should reach the coordinates within two hours."

"Well done, Ensign," Chakotay said softly. He turned to his first officer. "Commander, you have the bridge. Let me know when we hear back from our friends in the Beta quadrant."

=/\=

Harry Kim was fidgeting at his station. For the moment, there was nothing he could do to push the message to Starfleet along the alien network. They would reach their wayward shuttle near the relay station in about an hour. Until then, all he could do was hail the Tereshkova repeatedly and hope the shuttle was able to receive their communications, and respond. So far, nothing.

Well, perhaps there was something he could do.

"Lieutenant Tuvok," he said quietly, hoping not to attract the attention of anyone else on the bridge. "I have something I'd like you to look at, sir, if you have a few minutes."

Tuvok nodded. "Send it to my station."

Kim quickly pulled up the backup logs Torres had been intending to purge, identified the two anomalous readings, and transmitted them to the tactical station. He watched as Tuvok's eyebrow raised, and then the Vulcan looked at him searchingly. "Interesting, Mr Kim," he said. "These logs warrant further study."

=/\=

The door to his ready room chimed. Chakotay called, "Enter."

Janeway came in and handed him a PADD. "The message has passed through two relay stations without incident, but it's being buffered in a third, the one that appears to be powered by a quantum singularity. Ensign Kim says this isn't unexpected. The singularity is producing gravimetric instabilities that may be interfering with the datastream."

Chakotay took the PADD. "Is there anything we can do about it?"

"We could try to stabilise the station's containment field, but we'd need to get closer. It's five point eight light years away. We'll be cutting it fine to get there before the ship in the Beta quadrant moves out of range of the network."

"How far is the Tereshkova from that station?"

"Two point one light years."

"Perhaps they can help. If we can get a hail through to them, we can instruct them to attempt to stabilise the station's containment field. As soon as they've succeeded, we can complete our rescue of the Tereshkova crew." He smiled. "Two birds, one stone."

He tapped his commbadge. "Captain to the bridge. Lieutenant Paris, set a course for the relay encompassing the singularity, warp nine point five. Ensign Kim, continue trying to raise the Tereshkova's crew. When they respond, enlist their assistance in stabilising the singularity's containment field." He waited for their acknowledgements then cut the comm channel.

Janeway turned to exit onto the bridge.

"Kate, wait a minute." Chakotay came around his desk and gestured to the couch. "We have a while before we reach the relay station. Sit with me."

She sat.

Chakotay regarded her for a moment. "In a few hours, we could be hearing our first message from home in almost two years. It's incredible, amazing. And yet you don't seem too excited about it."

She inclined her head. "If we do hear from Starfleet, I fully expect their message to contain orders for you to take me into custody immediately, along with my former crew. We're terrorists, Chakotay, at least in the eyes of the Federation."

He was silent.

"If that does come to pass," she went on, "I guess the question is, what will you do?"

"What will I do?" Chakotay straightened. "I'll explain to them that whatever you are in their eyes, to me you're vital members of this crew, and we need you - _I_ need you – to help get this ship home." He leaned forward, grasping her hands in his. "I'm hoping our logs will speak for themselves. But in case they don't, I'll be entering commendations into the official record for every former Maquis member of this crew, as well as an appeal for clemency. I'll take it to the Federation Council if I have to." _And I'll fight anyone, from the Federation president to those who lurk in the shadows, to save you_ , he thought.

She smiled, but it wasn't a happy smile. "It's a nice sentiment, Chakotay."

"Kate." He raised his hand to her face, his thumb stroking her cheekbone. She went very still, her eyes widening slightly. "I won't let them throw you in prison," he said softly. "And I'll kill anyone who tries to hurt you."

 _Hurt me_? she wondered. Her lips parted to question him, but before she could speak she saw that his gaze had dropped to her mouth. She realised that his thumb was still carefully smoothing her cheekbone, his fingers cradling her head. He seemed to be drawing her closer, or was it she who was leaning into him?

~Tuvok to the Captain.~

Chakotay's hand dropped from her face. She heard the rough edge in his voice as he responded, "Go ahead, Tuvok."

~We have received no response from the Tereshkova to our hails. We are approaching their coordinates. The shuttle appears to be adrift. There are no life signs aboard.~

"I'm on my way," the Captain replied. Janeway stood, smoothed her uniform, and followed him onto the bridge.


	4. Part 4 - Past Perfect

**4\. Past Perfect**

 **\- August, 2361 -**

"How's it going?"

Kathryn looked up as Chakotay entered the lab, making his way over to lean on her desk. "May I?" He took the PADD gently from her fingers.

"Be my guest." She snaked a hand round the back of her neck and sighed, absently rubbing away the tension. "The hard part's over, I guess I'm just so tired I can't think straight. I should've had this finished hours ago."

Chakotay watched her over the top of the PADD. Her hair was in disarray, her uniform crumpled, her lipstick had worn off and she'd loosened her collar. She looked exhausted, fragile. _Beautiful_ , he thought, not for the first time. "You should get some sleep."

She shook her head. "The Captain wants me to present my analysis of the Vaultera Nebula in the briefing room at 0900, before he meets with the reps from the Bolian Science Academy."

"Then let me help."

She gave him her crooked smile. "Aren't you tired too?"

"Not that tired." There was an unexpected richness to his tone and she met his gaze in surprise. His chocolate eyes were warm. She felt a flush creeping along her throat and hoped her voice was steady as she said, "Thanks, I'd love some help."

They worked steadily for the next couple of hours. As always, he helped her focus, helped her puzzle out the problems she'd been bashing her head against on her own. They were done long before she'd have completed the analysis alone. She leaned back in her chair and beamed at him as she copied the final report to Commander Marshall's mailbox and keyed off the PADD. Chakotay grinned back at her. "We did good."

She agreed. "Want a drink to celebrate?"

"Sure. Where? The mess hall?"

"No," she said before she'd thought about it, then realised her second reaction was as strong as her first. "No, let's go somewhere less ... public."

Chakotay tilted his head a little to one side. She could feel him studying her, sensing something different, trying to puzzle out her meaning. "Okay," he said evenly. "The arboretum?"

She looked unenthusiastic. "It's just that I don't feel like making small talk with anybody else. But if you'd rather be around other people..."

"No," he said as quickly as she had before. "No. I just didn't want you to think I was being presumptuous."

She looked a question at him.

"Inviting you up to see my etchings," he clarified, and grinned at her.

Kathryn couldn't stop the blush creeping along her cheekbones. "Your quarters?"

"Unless Maisie's moved out of yours."

"Unfortunately, no." She didn't know why she was blushing. It wasn't as if she'd never been in his quarters before. "Yours it is."

For some reason, as she rode the turbolift in silence with him, a bubble of anticipation rose in her chest. She squashed it firmly. She would have one drink – maybe two, talk to her friend, and get some sleep. She told herself the anticipation was for tomorrow's presentation to the captain.

Chakotay keyed in the access code to his quarters. "Lights, sixty percent." He went to the replicator. "Denobulan Starburst?" She nodded and he headed back to her with her black-hearted cocktail and his Risan beer. "Come take a seat," he invited. "Computer, play last music selection."

Something unfamiliar, something dark and seductive filled her ears and she sipped at the heady liquor, sighing with pleasure. Chakotay sat beside her and she kicked off her boots, tucking her feet beneath her on the squashy couch. She rubbed at the back of her neck.

"Have you eaten recently?" Chakotay asked.

"I ate lunch, I think," she said vaguely.

He was up immediately. "It's after midnight, Kate. You have to start looking after yourself."

"Yes, Mother," she mocked.

"Hey, you'll thank me when you remember how synthehol affects empty stomachs. Here, eat this." Chakotay thrust a bowl of soup into her hands. Despite herself, her stomach growled and she'd spooned up half the bowl before she realised Chakotay's eyes were dancing with barely suppressed amusement. She decided to brazen it out. "Delicious." With both hands, she raised the bowl to her lips and drank her fill, wiped her hand across her mouth and handed him the empty bowl with an innocent grin. Chakotay laughed out loud.

Kathryn sipped her drink and watched him surreptitiously as he settled back on the couch. She raised her hand to pinch and rub at the tense muscles at the back of her neck and was startled by his voice. "You keep doing that."

She hadn't realised he'd been watching her too.

"Your neck hurts?"

Kathryn nodded. "I sit in one position too long. I forget to take breaks."

"I can help."

She stared at him. "Help?"

He rolled his eyes. "Turn around, will you?" When she didn't move, he took the drink from her hand and set it on the table, then, gently and with no obvious sign of effort, placed his hands on her ribs and turned her so her back was toward him. Before she had time to squawk, her drink was back in her grasp and he was smoothing her braid over one shoulder, and then his fingers probed at the tight knots in her nape and she forgot about protesting.

"That's good," she exclaimed.

"Don't sound so surprised," he grinned. "I've had practice."

She stiffened; was that a boast?

"My mother suffered migraines all her life," he explained. "A neck rub was the only thing that helped."

Kathryn relaxed against his hand.

"You know," he said after a minute or two, "this would be a lot easier if you took off your jacket."

She giggled, and cursed herself immediately. "Trying to seduce me, Lieutenant?" She was going for arch and knowing, but he stiffened and pulled away.

"I didn't mean anything inappropriate," he was beginning when she cut him off. "Sorry, Chakotay, it was a dumb joke. Here," and, placing her drink on the coffee table, she raised her hands to her jacket and unfastened it, a little jerkily. She hesitated a moment, and then she pushed it briskly from her shoulders. The jacket landed on the carpet and she turned her back to him again. He could see her shoulderblades through the soft cotton of her tank, delicate, like the wings of a bird. She was shivering a little. "Computer, raise room temperature by two degrees," he said absently and then raised his hands to her skin.

He couldn't help a small exhalation of breath as he flattened his hands along her spine. He felt her quiver and saw the tiny hairs raised on the nape of her neck. "You're still cold?" he asked.

"No." She struggled to sound normal. His strong fingers began to soothe her aching shoulders. Despite herself she slowly relaxed into his touch, her eyes fluttering closed. The tension in her muscles eased, and she gave a soft involuntary moan.

Chakotay's hands paused and she murmured in protest. She heard a quick intake of breath, and then his thumbs resumed circling her shoulderblades, fingers spanning her narrow ribcage. The rhythm of his fingers was hypnotic; she could feel her whole body loosening into an almost liquid state. She eased her head to one side, stretching her neck, and he moved his hand upward to stroke his palm along the line from her ear to her shoulder. She sighed, almost purred, in pleasure, her back arching. His hand stilled again.

Then she felt the whisper of breath on the exposed line of her neck, the barest touch of lips on her skin.

She didn't dare move, couldn't make a sound, but she was sure he could hear her heart hammering. As though he'd taken her silence for permission, she felt his mouth touch just below her ear, and his hands slipped around to flatten against her belly. She held as still as she could, barely breathing, as his lips traced a path along the line of her neck and his hands slid upward, fingers curving around her breasts.

The heat of his fingers seared her skin through the thin fabric of her tank top. She couldn't help it any longer. Trembling, she pressed herself tentatively into his hands, growing bolder as her heartrate increased. She heard him exhale, felt him bite gently at her neck, his hands tightening on her body. "God, Kate," he murmured, his words in direct opposition to what his hands were telling her, "we can't do this."

She was speaking before she realised it, her voice sounding husky and unfamiliar. "Why can't we?"

"Because we're friends, and this would complicate it," he murmured. "And you're practically just out of the Academy. You'd want to have adventures and – and not get tied down," he trailed off.

She managed to gulp out a laugh. "Do you think I spent every minute of my cadetship with my nose in a PADD? I'm not as naive as you seem to think, Chakotay." Swallowing, she gathered her courage and twisted in his arms, her hands flattening against his chest.

"I've had lovers," she went on, sliding her hands upward to curl into the hair at the back of his head. "I've had adventures. I know what I want. And it doesn't have to be complicated. We can handle this." She could hardly believe it was Kathryn Janeway's mouth forming those words, yet she couldn't seem to stop. She bent to touch her lips to the pulse in his throat and his hands slid onto her hips, lifting her onto him. Her heart was thundering. She pressed into him, felt him hard against her. If they weren't clothed, she realised, they'd be making love right now.

 _Making love_. Kathryn stopped with a jolt. She couldn't think of it that way. It would be sex, pure and simple. To expect, to even dream of more would only lead to heartache.

She licked at the pulse in his throat, let her lips and tongue travel upward to his jaw, and finally he began to respond. His hands on her hips pulled her closer, harder against him, moved upward over her ribcage. She couldn't help whimpering; she clutched his wrist with one hand and tugged at it, guiding it where she wanted it, her head thrown back in pleasure as he touched her.

It wasn't enough. She reached for the hem of her tank top and pulled it over her head.

She watched as Chakotay took in the sight of her, then bent forward to touch and kiss her skin. "God," she gasped, almost collapsing onto him as her entire body thrummed with pleasure. She felt his hands move up to her face, felt his lips trailing up the column of her throat, and finally, meeting her own.

Her lips parted eagerly and her hands rose to tangle in his hair as she nibbled at his lips, her tongue exploring the shape of his mouth. Chakotay slid a hand between them, his fingers working to unfasten her uniform pants, pushing under the layers of clothing. "Please," she whispered. "I need you."

The last of Chakotay's reservations vanished and he managed to grin against her throat. "Then I think I'll move this to the bedroom," he murmured. He gathered her smoothly into his arms, his mouth finding hers again, so that she was so lost in his kiss she had no idea when he laid her gently on the bed, or when he slipped off the last of their clothing, or exactly when he finally lay with her, no barriers between them.

=/\=

"Kate."

A warm mouth was trailing over her bare shoulder, a hand slipping under the covers to smooth a path along her hip. She murmured in pleasure, unwilling to open her eyes. If this was a dream, it was the nicest one she'd had in a while.

"Kate, wake up."

"No," she pleaded, and then she felt his fingers dip lower and she gasped into wakefulness, turning into a kiss that stole her breath.

"Good morning," he whispered when he finally pulled away. She blinked up at him. She felt pleasantly sore, delightfully liquid, and ready for more.

"What time is it?" she mumbled through kiss-bitten lips.

"0600 hours," he murmured, and then he grinned at her. _Those damn dimples_ , she thought distractedly, _they're a lethal weapon_. "We have plenty of time."

"Oh, good," she whispered. "Then let's make the most of it…"

As she hurtled down the corridor to the turbolift at 0857, praying like hell she'd make it to the briefing room on time, Kathryn couldn't keep the smile off her face. Images from the past six hours were on constant replay in her memory. She leaned against the wall of the turbolift, trying to calm her breathing. _It's just sex_ , she reminded herself, trying to stop her wayward heart from climbing through her chest. _But damn_ _,_ _if it wasn't the best sex of my life_.

She wasn't really sure where they'd go from here. She had been the one to declare that this was just a bit of fun between friends, nothing more complicated than that, but she had to admit that she'd never actually had an arrangement like that before. How did they work? Was sex now to be expected every time they were alone, or would they still talk and laugh and play pranks and go to the mess hall together? And how would she know when she was supposed to be his friend, and when his lover? More to the point, how was she supposed to keep her hands off him now that she'd kissed him, tasted him, felt the indescribable things he could do to her body? Kathryn moaned and scrubbed her face with her hands, trying to focus. It was 0859 and she was presenting her analysis of the Vaultera Nebula to the senior staff in one minute.

 _Get a grip_ , she told herself fiercely as she requested entrance to the briefing room. _And whatever you do, when you're giving that presentation in there, do not look at Chakotay_.

She fumbled her way through a speech that left the Captain raising eyebrows at her, Lieutenant O'Day glaring and tapping an impatient foot, and Commander Marshall compressing her lips, though with displeasure or amusement, Kathryn couldn't say. It wasn't that she didn't know her topic, or that she hadn't prepared, it was that she couldn't seem to string a coherent sentence together. When she finally wound down, Captain Paris said, "Thank you, Ensign, for that thought-provoking dissertation. I'm sure we all feel sufficiently educated regarding the properties of the nebula, although I might suggest you spend some time refining your presentation skills. Dismissed."

Mortified, she stumbled out of the room, unable to restrain herself from glancing quickly at Chakotay on her way out. He appeared perfectly composed, his attention on the Captain.

It was only when she was back in the Astrometrics lab that it occurred to her. What if he had no intention of continuing their … arrangement?

She was suddenly certain that this was the case. Last night had been a once-off; he'd never intended to do it again. She had been spinning fantasies in her mind. _You're an idiot, Janeway_ , she rebuked herself. _Now forget it ever happened, and let things go back to normal_.

Despite her intentions, she couldn't quite bring herself to resume 'normal' immediately, and for the next few days she found herself avoiding him. She threw herself into her work, spending long hours in the lab, walking quickly away with a scrubbed-blank face on the rare occasion she saw him in the mess hall or the corridors of the ship. But then, when she returned from a late lunch one day, Ensign Zorok mentioned that Chakotay had stopped by the lab to see her, and she suddenly realised how much she missed him. So that evening, she changed out of her uniform, brushed out her hair and stiffened her backbone, and she went to see him in his quarters.

He opened the door and treated her to that heart-stopping, cursed-dimpled smile. "I was beginning to wonder if you were ever planning to speak to me again."

"I'm sorry," she confessed as he led her to the couch and handed her a drink. "I guess I needed a little time to think about things."

"Any conclusions?"

She took a gulp of her drink and set it on the table. "I don't know … I guess I'd like to hear what you think."

His dark eyes regarded her; she wished she could read them. "I think it was a night to remember."

She flushed. "So … one memorable night, then? We go back to normal?"

"Is that what you want?"

"I don't know," she stammered. "What do you want?"

"I know I don't want to lose you as a friend," he answered. "You're too important to me."

"You're important to me, too," she said hastily. "But …"

"But?"

She felt her face redden. "But it was a very memorable night."

Chakotay smiled slowly, and she felt a tingle start low in her belly, felt her pulse begin to heat up. She swallowed. "Maybe it's not a good idea to repeat it."

"Maybe it would get too complicated," he agreed.

"Maybe it would." She couldn't stop falling into his gaze. Was he moving closer, or was it her imagination?

"Maybe we shouldn't do it again." As if he had no control over it, his hand lifted, and she felt his fingers skating over her cheekbone, tangling in the soft hair behind her ear.

"Maybe we shouldn't," she whispered, as his lips met her own. And for a while, at least, there were no more maybes.

=/\=

After they'd finished their analysis of the Vaultera Nebula, the Al-Batani moved on to study proto-star formation in the Tendaras Cluster near Betazed. Kathryn, Ensign Zorok and the other science officers spent a fair amount of their time in shuttles with Chakotay or one of the other helm officers, cruising through the stellar nursery and taking as many scans and readings as they could.

Kathryn would remember it later as one of the happiest and simplest times in her career. Every few days she was lucky enough to go out into space and meander through a stellar field of the most astonishing beauty. The Cluster contained an amazing array of different phenomena and she sometimes felt as though she could drink in the knowledge it was serving up to her and still never have her fill.

She was out in the shuttle with Chakotay one day telling him excitedly about the triple-star system forming in the Bok globule they were investigating when she realised he was smiling at her. "What?" she asked, trailing off.

"I understood about one word in ten of that," he admitted.

"Sorry," she said sheepishly. "I guess these aren't exactly the missions you imagined when you were a kid, dreaming of becoming a Starfleet pilot."

"Don't be sorry," he answered seriously. "It's a privilege to fly you out here and watch you do what you do."

Kathryn tried not to pay any attention to the way his words made her feel so warm inside.

"I didn't actually dream of being a Starfleet pilot," he said, eventually.

"You didn't?"

"No." He grinned at her. "I dreamed of commanding my own starship."

She laughed. "Why doesn't that surprise me? I'm betting you'll be a captain before you're thirty-five."

"I'd better get on with it then," he teased her. "What about you? What's Kathryn Janeway's lofty ambition?"

Before she could answer, the shuttle lurched sickeningly and without warning, and the power went out. Emergency backup power had kicked in before Kathryn could catch her breath. "What was that?" she gasped.

Chakotay was already querying the helm. "Something interrupted the power flow to the impulse engines. Sub-light drive is offline. There are fluctuations in the plasma relays."

"What caused them?"

"Unknown." Chakotay's face was tense. "There's an overload in the primary power grid. If it cascades, we're in big trouble. I'll try stabilising it by –"

He was cut off by the explosion of the console to his left. The force of the blast threw him out of his chair, and he was slammed sideways into the shuttle wall. He crumpled to the floor.

"Chakotay!" She leapt out of her chair, searching for a medkit, finding one under her station. "Computer, what is the status of the power grid?" she demanded while her shaking fingers opened the medical tricorder.

~Warning. Power grid containment fluctuating. Impending cascade failure to primary EPS conduits.~

"That much I knew," she muttered, checking the med scan and realising with relief that Chakotay was suffering from a fractured shoulder and a vicious-looking bump on the head that had knocked him unconscious, but nothing life-threatening. She addressed the computer again. "How long until cascade failure begins?"

~Three minutes, twenty-five seconds.~

Kathryn bolted to the engineering station. "Computer, postulate cause of cascade failure?"

~Insufficient information.~

"You're no help, you self-satisfied robot!" she shouted in frustration. She pulled up a schematic of the shuttle's power grid and traced the fluctuation to a plasma relay behind the transporter control unit. "Computer, open a channel to the Al-Batani."

~Communications system is offline.~

Fear gripped her and she almost gave in to the accompanying wave of nausea, but she forced herself to shake it off. "Get a grip," she told herself harshly. "What could interrupt plasma flow to the impulse drive and the transporter control unit simultaneously?"

~That information is not available.~

"I wasn't asking you," she muttered. She bent over the engineering console. "Wait a minute. It wasn't simultaneous." She tracked the course of the power overload, realising it had started in the transporter unit, travelled to the impulse drive through a series of EPS conduits, and had begun to spread throughout other systems. Communications, transporters, shields, impulse drive: all had failed. External sensors and navigation were still online, but failing. The only systems unaffected were life support and warp drive, which ran on segregated power sources.

"Okay," Kathryn said aloud. "So something happened to the power relay behind the transporter console. Computer, was there an internal malfunction in that power relay?"

~Negative.~

"So if it wasn't internal, it must have been external." She tapped her fingers on the console for a moment, then spun back to the science station. "Accessing external sensor log … Oh, my God."

She stared at her console display.

A fraction of a second before the shuttle's power grid had failed, the external sensors had picked up a random shower of neutrino particles from the trinary star cluster they'd been scanning. The particles had passed through the shuttle's hull and impacted with the plasma relay powering the transporter control unit, triggering a power surge.

~Warning. Cascade failure to primary EPS conduits. Main power grid overload estimated within four minutes.~

In other words, in four minutes the shuttle would explode and scatter her atoms, and Chakotay's, over this segment of space. Shoving her rising panic aside, she tried to figure out what Chakotay had been intending to do to stabilise the cascade. Normally, shunting the excess power in the affected relay to various backup relays would be the first step, but it was too late for that; the overload had already cascaded and was gaining intensity. Her next option was to bolster containment of the EPS manifolds controlling the affected power conduits to try to stop the overload in its tracks, but given the catastrophic systems failure occurring, it was unlikely she'd be able to tap enough power to stabilise the manifolds. If only there was a way to access one of the segregated systems…

~Warning. Overload in two minutes.~

But of course there was.

There were two systems unaffected by the plasma overload: life support, and the warp core. If she could bridge one of them to the main power grid she might be able to stabilise the plasma containment field and stop the cascade. Taking power from life support was a last resort. Kathryn pulled up the shuttle's design schematics; somewhere, there would be an EPS tap she could reconfigure to shunt power from the warp plasma manifolds to the main grid's containment field. "There you are," she muttered. Carefully, she realigned the plasma transfer relays – it wouldn't do to accidentally dump terawatts of raw energy into the already straining impulse fusion reactor – and slowly, gradually, redirected warp plasma through the conduits that fed the containment grid. "Come on," she pleaded.

~Power overload decreasing,~ reported the computer. ~Containment grid stable. Main power has been restored.~

Slumping back in her chair, adrenaline coursing, Kathryn began to shake. "Computer, open a channel to the Al-Batani," she ordered unsteadily, and at the computer's chirp of acknowledgement, she reported to Captain Paris that she was coming home, and bringing wounded.

=/\=

"For consistently outstanding performance, and for your recent bravery and exceptionally quick thinking, it's my pleasure to grant you the rank of lieutenant, junior grade."

She stood proud, trying not to blush, as Owen Paris fixed the shiny new black-centred pip to her collar. "Congratulations, Lieutenant Janeway," he said, shaking her hand. "Your father will be proud. And so am I."

"Thank you, sir," she glowed.

"Take a seat," he invited, and she sat opposite him at his desk. "There's something I've been wanting to discuss with you."

"Sir?"

"A captain isn't supposed to have favourites, Katie," he told her, then broke into a grin. "But what can I say? I'm human, and you're the daughter of one of my oldest friends. So forgive me if I seem a little overbearing here, but I'm a little more interested in your future than I am the other junior officers' on the ship."

She wasn't sure what she was supposed to say. "Captain?"

"You're a promising scientist," he went on. "And if that's your chosen career path, who am I to argue? But I think you might be missing an opportunity." He leaned forward a little. "Have you ever thought about switching to the command track?"

"Me?"

"You. You're smart, you find unconventional solutions, and you keep your head in a crisis. Those are some of the key qualities Starfleet looks for in its command officers."

She blinked. "I, ah, I've never really considered it, sir. The promise of scientific exploration was the reason I decided to join the fleet."

"Well, fortunately, Starfleet captains get to do a fair bit of exploring in the name of science, too," he reminded her. "I'm not giving you an order here, Katie. I'm just asking you to think about it. And if you do decide to switch tracks, you'll have my full support."

"I will think about it, Captain," she replied slowly. "Thank you."

=/\=

For six months, Kathryn Janeway had been falling deeper and harder in love, and for six months she'd been trying to fool herself that she wasn't.

On the surface, she told herself, nothing had changed. Everyone who knew them saw them as just close friends. Nobody, she was certain, knew that there were times when they were alone – not every time, but many - and they would look at each other and know that now, yes, _now_ …

The trouble was, she was finding it ever harder to draw the line of separation between these two disparate halves of their relationship. She had been content at first with Chakotay her friend and Chakotay her lover. Now, she realised with no small sense of dismay, what she wanted was Chakotay. All of him, with no divide, no barrier between them.

She knew she had to tell him. They couldn't continue as they were with him ignorant of her feelings; it wasn't fair to either of them. She was terrified at how much she stood to lose, but she couldn't help hoping that perhaps there was just as much to gain.

Heart in hands, she stepped up to his door and pressed the keypad to request entry.

"Kate!" Chakotay was clearly shocked when he opened the door to her. "How did you hear so fast? The orders only came through half an hour ago."

Behind him, she saw a carry bag and small piles of his possessions on surfaces.

"Come in," he said, taking her hand. "I was just starting to pack."

She stumbled into the room. "Pack?" she repeated blankly. "Orders?"

Chakotay stopped. "So you haven't heard?"

She stared at him dumbly.

"I've been promoted," he explained, his voice softening. "Executive officer on the Yamaguchi. It's a much smaller ship than the Al-Batani, only seventy crew, but it's a step closer to my own command."

She felt her heart, which had been so light, so full of hope, begin to splinter.

"You're leaving?" It was all she could force out through the harsh ache in her throat.

"Tomorrow," he confirmed, regret in his eyes as he looked at her. "Kate …"

She straightened her spine and made herself meet his eyes. "Congratulations, Lieutenant Commander," she said, and although her lips were stiff, she knew her voice held the appropriate warmth. "You deserve this."

"Thank you," he smiled, then the smile faded slowly. "I'll miss you."

"I'll miss you, too," she managed, and then he drew her toward him and she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him with the depth of all the feelings she'd never had the chance to express. He led her to the bed and tenderly, with great care, kissed her and touched her until she opened for him, trembling with need. As he moved inside her for what she supposed would be the very last time, she bit into her own hand to muffle the tears that threatened to choke her.


	5. Part 5 - Present Irregular

**5\. Present Irregular**

 **\- October, 2373 -**

Voyager has detected a Starfleet ship through the alien sensor network, a means of communicating with home, and suddenly, my options have opened up again.

Their message has already been composed and transmitted, but I still have a few tricks up my sleeve. Lieutenant Torres used a photonically-enhanced carrier wave to strengthen the communication signal; I can reconfigure the secondary navigation console, my station on the bridge when I'm not at the helm, to send an almost-indetectable photonic pulse after it. It will attach itself to the carrier wave and be transmitted to the Starfleet ship along with Voyager's message. I can encode the pulse with a message of my own, a series of numbers, apparently meaningless. It will most likely take some time, but eventually that numerical sequence will make its way, via Voyager's datastream, to its intended recipient – any one of the many Obsidian Order operatives currently serving covertly within Starfleet. My message will of necessity be brief, but it will contain enough information to eventually be redirected to my mother, informing her that I am alive, and requesting further instruction.

It is risky, of course; the pulse could be detected by Lieutenant Tuvok or one of the other ship's officers, but I am practiced in the art of masking my actions. I will use the same method I employed to conceal my communications to the Krenim ship, and delete all trace once the transmission is complete.

I am uncertain when I will receive a reply from the Order, but my people are resourceful and I have no doubt they will find a way. Until they do, I will maintain my cover and stay alert to opportunities.

I have considered enlisting the assistance of one of the crew – turning them, in other words – and during the early days in the Delta quadrant I studied the Maquis renegades in particular to assess the prospect of corrupting one of them to my means. Lieutenant Paris was another possibility, but he has assimilated with contemptible thoroughness and is now the very model of a Starfleet officer. For a time I considered compromising the Captain, and began to lay the groundwork that would ensure his compliance. But my seduction failed, and now that he has his beloved Janeway back I am aware I have lost any future opportunity.

There is something about her. Something that stirs in me a vague and long-buried emotion, or perhaps the memory of an emotion. In my efforts to preserve my assumed identity, I have compartmentalised, I have subjugated so much of my real self, that at times I find it difficult to access. Still, I can't help feeling that somehow, she is connected to something I should know.

No matter. I have not been wasting my time with idle irritations. Since the Captain's revelation that he suspects a Section 31 agent has infiltrated his crew, both Lieutenant Tuvok and I have investigated diligently, in our separate ways. He has not identified the agent, but I have. The agent's identity will be of interest to the Order, and so I have included it in my coded transmission. All I need to do now is send the message, and wait; and I am so very practiced at waiting.

=/\=

"We're approaching the Tereshkova," Kim announced. "Still no response to hails."

"The shuttle appears to have suffered an attack," observed Tuvok. "All systems are down."

Chakotay stood. "Life signs?"

Kim shook his head, his dark eyes tense.

The captain nodded at Janeway. "You'll need an EVA suit."

"Tuvok," Janeway summoned him, and they headed to the transporter room. They pulled environmental suits from the storage compartments. Tuvok had his phaser ready, Janeway her tricorder, as they beamed over.

Materialising inside the shuttle, Janeway took in the scene around her and almost lost the battle with her rising gorge. "Fuck," she said involuntarily, then closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing, waiting for the nausea to subside. When she opened them, she saw that Tuvok had holstered his phaser and was scanning the … _whatever_ … draped over surfaces around them. Her brain refused to recognise it as the stretched and dessicated human skin she knew it to be.

The shuttle's walls were streaked in blood and grey matter. A torn Starfleet uniform, science blue, hung from a console. A boot lay discarded in a corner; when she looked more closely, she saw it still contained a roughly amputated foot.

"What happened here?" she asked faintly.

"Slaughter," Tuvok replied succinctly. "Commander, I suggest we have the remains transported to Voyager's sickbay for the Doctor to analyse. He should be able to determine whether this represents the remains of all four of the Tereshkova's crew."

Janeway nodded and tapped her commbadge. Frankly, she couldn't wait to get the hell out of there. "Janeway to Voyager. Transport Lieutenant Tuvok and myself directly to Sickbay, along with all humanoid matter the scanners can detect. Energise."

=/\=

"Report, Doctor." Chakotay's face was grey-tinged.

"There's no doubt, Captain. This matter constitutes the remains of two humans, one Bajoran and one Betazoid, identified as Lieutenant Durst and Crewmen Foster, Nera and Suder." The EMH was tight-lipped. He stood by the examination table and indicated the gruesome pile before them. "It appears they each underwent a complete osteotomy. The entire skeletal structure, musculature, ligaments and tendons, organs – all have been removed."

"For what purpose?"

"I can't say. My database contains the medical archives of the entire Federation, but it makes no reference to anything like this."

"It almost looks ritualistic," Chakotay offered. "Somebody carefully harvested the organs and entire internal body structure, and left the skin discarded. Some ancient Earth cultures used to practice flaying, but this appears to be the exact opposite. In those rituals, the skin was usually the prize and the rest of the body was discarded."

Janeway grimaced. She was still pale, Chakotay saw, but composed. She addressed Tuvok. "Did your scans reveal anything about the weapons signatures on the shuttle's hull plating?"

"The signatures were caused by high-yield polaron weapons. They do not correspond to any species we have yet encountered. However, we may be entering a contested or heavily-guarded area of space." He turned to Chakotay. "Captain, I would recommend we take the ship to yellow alert."

"Agreed." Chakotay made to tap his commbadge, but before he could, Ensign Kim commed him.

~Captain, a ship is approaching at high warp. Its weapons are powered and their signature matches the scorch marks on the Tereshkova's hull. It's on an intercept course.~

"Red alert," Chakotay replied. "I'm on my way."

=/\=

"The vessel is in hailing range," Kim advised.

"Open a channel." Chakotay stood as the viewscreen changed from the star field to the interior of the alien ship. An imposing humanoid stood front and centre, clad in heavy grey armour. Cold black eyes stared out from behind a metal faceplate.

~What are you?~ he demanded.

"I'm Captain Chakotay of the Federation starship Voyager. Who are you?"

~We are the Hirogen. You violate our space and our property. You will be our prey.~

"Your property?" Chakotay decided to ignore the last part of the HIrogen's threat. "You mean the sensor network? We thought it was abandoned."

~It belongs to us. Terminate your transmission and prepare to be taken.~

"Wait," said Chakotay. "Your network gave us the unique opportunity to communicate with our people. They're very far away and we're expecting a message back –"

~All messages will be intercepted. This is your final warning. You will be taken as relics of the hunt.~

"Relics?" Chakotay's face hardened. "You murdered four of my crew and violated their remains."

~They were pitiful prey. Easily taken.~

"You'll find we're not so easily subdued. This ship is more than a match for yours."

~Good. Strong prey makes for a better hunt.~

The Hirogen cut the channel. Instantly, Voyager rocked from weapons fire.

Chakotay met Tuvok's eyes. "Target their weapons array."

Tuvok complied. "I have destroyed one of their phaser banks. Polaron torpedo incoming." The ship bucked again, and Tuvok reported, "Shields at sixty percent."

"Evasive manoeuvres, Mr Paris." Chakotay took his seat and met Janeway's eyes as Voyager sliced to port, avoiding another bout of weapons fire. "Harry, what's the status of the transmission?"

"Still lodged in the relay station, Captain."

"Take us closer to it, Tom. Tuvok fire at will. Kim, as soon as we've disabled the Hirogen ship, we need to stabilise that station's containment field. I'm not losing that message."

"Full impulse," Paris reported. "The HIrogen are in pursuit."

"I have disabled another of their weapons arrays," Tuvok stated. "Two remain operable."

"Sir, the gravimetric eddies from the singularity are increasing," said Paris. "I can't get us much closer than this."

"Hold position. Tuvok?"

"Our shields are at thirty-six percent. The Hirogen are firing again … Captain, they are firing on the relay station."

"They've destabilised the containment field," Kim said urgently. "If we can't shore it up the singularity could breach and initiate a chain reaction in the relay network."

"Lieutenant, disable that ship," Janeway ordered Tuvok.

"Preparing photon torpedoes, half yield. Targeting the remaining weapons banks. Firing."

A few moments later, the Hirogen ship exploded in a fiery shock of light.

"Tuvok!" Chakotay was on his feet again. "What happened?"

"I am uncertain, Captain. Our torpedoes should not have destroyed them."

Kim cut in, "Captain, the singularity is beginning to destabilise."

"Can we get any closer, Tom?"

"I wouldn't recommend it," the pilot answered. "Voyager would take a beating. A shuttle could withstand the gravimetric eddies more easily."

Chakotay looked to his first officer. "Commander, take the Cochrane to stabilise the containment field."

She nodded, stood, and hesitated.

 _Now what_?

Protocol dictated that the away team consist of two members, minimum. She needed a pilot. And protocol also dictated that she assign the senior flight controller on duty to the mission.

 _I can't_.

Lieutenant Paris, anticipating the order everyone was expecting, had already half-risen from his chair, when Janeway glanced over to the secondary navigation console and said, "Ensign Seska. You're with me."

Paris froze. "Commander?"

"As you were, Lieutenant."

" _Commander_ ," he said more forcefully, standing to face her now. "I should be flying that shuttle."

"You're needed here on Voyager in case the Hirogen send reinforcements." She turned, dismissing him, but he moved swiftly in front of her and faced her down. "Sir, I am the chief helm officer and my place is on that shuttle with you."

"And I'm the first officer," she shot back, "and choosing the members of my away team is my prerogative." She turned and headed for the turbolift, Seska at her heels.

"Return to your station, Mr Paris," she heard Chakotay say quietly as the turbolift doors closed.

=/\=

"Commander, we're as close to the singularity as we can get," Seska reported.

"Deflector online." Janeway entered commands into her console. "Initiating the polaron pulse. The variance in the containment field is decreasing." She checked her readouts, then nodded. "That should do it. Set a course back to Voyager."

"Aye –" Seska began, and then the shuttle shuddered. "Commander, another Hirogen ship just dropped out of warp and fired on us. I've lost engines."

Janeway tried to activate the comm. "Janeway to Voyager –"

"Communications are down," Seska stated. "Shields are gone. We're losing main power."

Janeway checked the external sensors. "I'm detecting two other Hirogen ships five light years away, on an intercept course. Voyager won't be able to help us." She tapped her fingers, searching for options. "Ensign, do we have manoeuvring thrusters?"

"Yes. Helm control is failing."

"Set a course for the Tereshkova. I'm sending out a wide-band thoron burst. It should hide us from the Hirogen's sensors long enough to get us to that shuttle. Take up a position just off its bow."

"Approaching the Tereshkova." Seska guided the Cochrane into place. "Holding position seven point five kilometres from the shuttle."

"All stop," Janeway said. "I'm remodulating our hull frequency to match the Tereshkova's. That should make us invisible to scanners." She finished entering her commands. "Done."

"Main power is offline," Seska reported.

Janeway sat back. "And now we wait."

=/\=

"Captain, I have an explanation for the destruction of the Hirogen ship."

Chakotay turned to Tuvok. "Let's hear it."

"Sir, I believe we should discuss this in your ready room."

Chakotay raised an eyebrow. "Lieutenant Paris, you have the bridge."

In the ready room, Chakotay offered Tuvok a seat. He declined, so Chakotay remained standing. "Report, Lieutenant."

"I have discovered, with Ensign Kim's assistance, that several apparently unconnected discrepancies appear to have been the work of a single person." He handed Chakotay a PADD. "On stardate 49021.5, Ensign Kim detected that someone had accessed the power grid from an EPS node on Deck Seven and connected the communications system to the main power circuits. It seems a message was directed through the power grid and encoded in the waste energy from the propulsion systems. At the time, Ensign Kim believed it was an anomalous reading caused by the wide-spread systems failures Voyager was suffering at the time. He was incorrect. I have not determined the recipient of the message, but given the date on which it occurred, I would surmise the communication was directed toward the Krenim weapon vessel."

Chakotay glanced up at him sharply.

Tuvok went on, "On stardate 49043.6, during the final battle with Annorax's ship, our temporal shields were restored. Shortly before that occurred, another communication was directed through the propulsion relays. I have run a signal correlation trace and determined that both incidents were initiated from the helm." He indicated the relevant data on the PADD Chakotay was holding.

Chakotay's eyes went dark.

"An hour ago," Tuvok continued, "a photonic pulse was directed toward the alien sensor network, several minutes before our torpedoes destroyed the Hirogen vessel. I have not yet determined the purpose of the photonic surge. However, it appears that our weapons were infused with a plasma burst which increased the torpedo yield to one hundred and twenty percent, causing the destruction of the Hirogen ship. Again, both incidents came from the same station; in this case, the secondary navigation panel." He paused. "It appears a saboteur has been working aboard Voyager for some time."

Chakotay said, "Seska."

~Captain to the bridge,~ Paris said over the comm.

"Report, Mr Paris," the captain asked when he and Tuvok returned to the bridge.

"A Hirogen warship just dropped out of warp and fired on the Cochrane." Paris' jaw was clenched. "I'm not detecting the shuttle on sensors. The ship is on an intercept course. Two other vessels are approaching, five light years from our position."

"Shields," Chakotay ordered. "Tuvok, disable that Hirogen ship as soon as it's in weapons range."

"Aye, Captain," Tuvok answered from his station, and a moment later, "Firing. Their weapons have been neutralised. They are retreating."

"Ensign Kim, find our shuttle. Tuvok, Paris, in my ready room. Now."

=/\=

"Interesting tactic, Commander," said Seska. "I don't recall learning that one from the Starfleet tactical manual."

Janeway quirked a smile. "That's because you won't find it in any Starfleet manual. I learned that trick when I was in the Maquis." She turned to Seska. "If you don't mind me asking, Ensign, was there ever a time you considered joining the Maquis yourself?"

"Because I'm Bajoran?" Seska replied. At Janeway's nod, she answered, "Yes, of course. But I felt I could do more good for my people, and the colonists in the DMZ, as a member of Starfleet."

"Why?"

Seska leaned back in her chair. "There's a story my father once told me during the Cardassian occupation, when I was a child in the work camps, before he was killed by one of the prison guards. I was an intransigent child, and I often protested against the cruelty of the Cardassian guards. In my early teens, I joined with some of my friends in planning an uprising against them. We cobbled together an explosive device from spare parts the guards had left lying around. My plan was to strap the bomb to myself and take several of the guards hostage, demanding that they stop beating and torturing my people. I was fully prepared to sacrifice myself for what I saw as the greater good."

Janeway was listening intently. "Brave."

"Foolish," Seska corrected her. "My father discovered what we intended to do. He took me aside and told me to abandon my plans. To emphasise his point, he told me a parable." She paused, collecting her memories, and went on, "High in the mountains of Bajor, many centuries ago, there lived a creature called the tika bird. She had lived for many thousands of years alone, until one day she miraculously laid three eggs. Her young hatched several days later, and the tika bird was filled with joy. She vowed that there was nothing in her power that she wouldn't do to protect her young."

Janeway's fingers had stilled on the console. Seska went on,

"One day, a felor cat came climbing into the mountains. He hadn't eaten for a very long time, and he was very hungry. By chance he came upon the tika bird's nest, and he prepared to fill his belly with the three young birds. But then the mother, who had been out seeking food for her children, came back and saw what was about to happen. She placed herself between the felor cat and her young. The felor cat told her to move aside, but she replied that she would give herself to him to consume, as long as he would leave her young unmolested."

A high, tight singing had begun in the back of Kathryn Janeway's brain.

"The felor cat agreed, and the tika bird gave herself gladly to be eaten, knowing she had protected her young. But as soon as the cat had eaten her, he turned to the nest and ate her three children as well."

Seska paused. "My father told me this story to illustrate the futility of self-sacrifice. He said my plan to put myself in the path of danger would fail. The Cardassians might agree to modify their treatment of the Bajoran prisoners to stop me from exploding the bomb and taking the guards to the afterlife with me, but as soon as I released them, they would kill me and go right back to their ways of torture and starvation."

She glanced over at Janeway, but the commander's face was turned away. Seska continued, "The Maquis put themselves in the face of death and danger to save their people in the demilitarised zone. But I knew their cause would fail. Whatever victories they wrought, whatever sacrifices they made, they could not stand against the Cardassian military. Cardassia would destroy them, and all of the colonies they were trying to save. I knew joining the Maquis would be futile. So I stayed in Starfleet, where I hoped I could do more to prevent the massacres of the colonists, and the war we all knew was coming."

There was a sick knot in the pit of Janeway's stomach and her spine felt crystallised, like ice. She could barely open her frozen lips to speak.

"Your father told you that story?"


	6. Part 6 - Past Continuous

**6\. Past Continuous**

 **\- April, 2362 -**

Kathryn Janeway fastened the pips to her collar and met the eyes of her reflection. She was due on duty in five minutes and knew Commander Marshall had new orders for them, but she couldn't summon the energy to care very much.

She scowled at the mirror. She'd been snapping at people all month, her ire rising as swiftly and irrationally as the unexpected tears whenever she could snatch some time alone. All month – ever since Chakotay had transferred to the Yamaguchi.

She felt like a piece of her was missing, and she didn't know if she would ever get it back.

She averted her eyes from her reflection before it could blur behind the hot useless tears again and snatched up a brush, yanking it through her hair. The resultant pain was all the excuse she needed to blink and sniff. _Snap out of it,_ she scolded herself, not for the first time.

She threw the brush down, pulled her hair quickly into its customary braid and straightened her spine.

"Good morning, Lieutenant," Marshall greeted her when she entered the astrometrics lab. "We'll begin our briefing as soon as everyone arrives."

Janeway glanced around, surprised; it seemed like all the other alpha shift officers were present. She heard the door slide open behind her and Marshall nodded at the new arrival. "Welcome, Lieutenant. Everybody gather round, please."

Kathryn turned to the door and, to her surprised dismay, came face to face with Lieutenant Justin Tighe. He looked at her briefly and turned his gaze away.

"Our new mission is to study massive compact halo objects in the Arias system," Marshall informed them. "It will take us two weeks to arrive at the system. I intend to use that time to review our scans of the Mutaras system; they may provide a valuable baseline for comparison. On arrival, Lieutenant Janeway and Ensign Bates will begin an analysis of gravitational variances in the accretion disc and their effect on subspace, while Ensigns Zorok and Greville will concentrate on ways to remodulate the Arias sensor array to produce more accurate scans of the phenomena." She paused. "I don't have to remind you all that the Arias system is situated close to the border of the Cardassian Union. There's no cause for concern, but as a precaution, any away missions to study the MACHOs will be accompanied by a security officer, and the ship will remain at yellow alert as long as any officers are offboard."

Janeway felt a small stab of anxiety. There had been minimal reported activity from the Federation planets close to Cardassian space lately and the general hope within Starfleet was that the Cardassians were uninterested in expanding their territory, but any time she was told there was no cause for concern, she found herself perversely concerned. She found herself wondering again why the Al-Batani's scientific missions seemed so frequently to send the ship to potential trouble spots.

On top of that, she had to deal with the presence of Justin Tighe. Despite their parting on cordial terms when he'd left the ship eighteen months ago, she wasn't looking forward to enduring his silent blue gaze again.

=/\=

Although every single time she received one they tore her wounded heart open all over again, Chakotay's irregular subspace messages remained the highlight of her days. The Yamaguchi was stationed too far away for real-time conversation, a fact which gave her some solace, as she was spared the necessity of putting on a brave face for him.

That was especially fortunate on the day when, a couple of months into their expedition to the Arias system, she received the communication in which he mentioned a security lieutenant he'd been working closely with. Sensing the undercurrent in Chakotay's tone when he mentioned her, Kathryn looked up the lieutenant's service record. She was tall and blonde and beautiful and Kathryn wanted to kill her.

Her eyes were still red-rimmed the following morning when she reported to the ready room to give Captain Paris an update on her latest analysis. He listened patiently to her monotonal recitation of her findings, and when she'd concluded her report, he told her to take a seat on the couch by the viewport. She perched nervously on the edge. He offered her coffee, which she declined.

"Lieutenant," he began, seating himself on the couch opposite. His voice was as gruff as ever, but his eyes radiated compassion. "Katie. This is none of my business, but I promised your father I'd look out for you, so forgive me for trespassing into your personal life. I can see you've been upset since Chakotay transferred."

Kathryn wished the deck plating would open up and swallow her. Family friend or not, words could not do justice to her utter humiliation at realising that the Captain was fully aware she was pining.

"We've all been there, Katie," he said kindly. "When my first love affair ended, I was useless for months. But I got over it, and then I met my wife and wondered what I'd ever seen in the first girl. Besides," he leaned forward, making sure she was listening, "unfortunately, the life of a Starfleet officer means we're often away from those we love for extended periods. Sometimes forever. It's the price we pay for the honour of serving."

 _I will not cry_ , she told herself vehemently. "I understand, Captain, and I apologise if my, uh, state of mind has in any way interfered with the performance of my duties."

"You're still as capable as ever, Katie, it's just that your enthusiasm has been a little dimmed of late. But I'm hoping I can help you reignite it. I'm leading a mission in a few days to remodulate the Arias sensor array, and I'd like you to come along."

"You're going on an away mission, sir?"

"It's not exactly standard protocol, I know. But even captains get cabin fever sometimes. Besides, it's a simple survey mission, about as easy as they come." He stood. "Report to Shuttlebay Two at 0800 on Thursday, Lieutenant. Dismissed."

=/\=

So complete was the blackness that for a moment, when she first opened her eyes, she thought she must be still asleep. Then she smelled the dank cold, felt the chill of concrete against her cheek, and her heart lodged in her throat as she began to remember.

The shuttlecraft. Captain Paris at the helm, easing them into orbit of Arias II. The cool voice of Lieutenant Talik, the Vulcan security officer. _I'm detecting a vessel on fast approach. It's a Cardassian cruiser_.

The shuttle jolting as they were hit with weapons fire. _Shields and weapons are gone_. Her own voice, tight with fear. _I can't raise the Al-Batani. Communications must be down_. The terror, the regret in Captain Paris' eyes, turned toward her as the transporter beam pulled them away.

The endless march through dim, cold corridors, her feet barely able to keep up as two Cardassian guards quickstepped her along, holding her by the elbows. _Where are you taking us_? she'd demanded. _We're Starfleet officers. You're committing an act of aggression_. The silence from the guards. The kick to the small of her back as they reached the cell, sending her sprawling to her knees. The blow to her head.

Then, mercifully, blackness.

Janeway lay still, taking stock of her body. Her lower back ached, but she thought it was probably just bruised. Her head pounded; she raised her hand to her temple and felt blood, both dried and sticky. She swallowed against the nausea in her throat; a mild concussion, most likely. Carefully, she felt the area of ground around her. There was a wall perhaps fifty centimetres to her left, open space to her right. Slowly, pausing often to catch her breath as her head swam with each movement, she pulled herself to her feet. She rested her left hand on the wall and took cautious steps forward, feeling in front of her with her right. She had just reached a perpendicular wall when she heard booted feet approaching, a metal clank, and light fell into her cell.

She turned, her head spinning sickeningly at the motion. "Bring her," she heard. Hands grasped her upper arms and she was pulled into light, blinking.

"Where are you taking me?"

She was backhanded, hard, across the mouth, her head whipped back on her neck. Gasping, she tried not to retch. When she could speak again, she demanded, "Where are my crewmates?"

One of the guards grabbed her by the throat, fingers digging into the soft skin until she gagged. "Learn more quickly, Starfleet," he said. His voice was soft, and it frightened her far more than if he'd shouted at her. "You speak when given permission."

Trembling, she fell silent. They reached a door; one of the guards rapped on it twice and it opened onto a large chamber. She was dragged inside.

Captain Paris and Lieutenant Talik stood against the far wall, flanked by guards. Talik balanced on one leg, the other held slightly off the ground, his ankle clearly broken. One entire side of Paris' face was a mass of blood and contusions, his right eye hidden in swollen flesh. His undamaged eye stared directly into Janeway's as she entered. In it she read pain, fear, guilt.

In the centre of the room, a man sat before a desk. "Bring her here," he addressed her escort, and she was half-pulled, half-shoved to stand in front of him.

"Welcome to Celtris III, my dear," he addressed her mildly. "What is your name?"

She flicked a glance at the captain and waited for his infinitesimal nod before replying. "Lieutenant Kathryn Janeway, Starfleet service number alpha-three-five-seven-gamma-nine."

The Cardassian smiled faintly. "I am aware of the Federation's quaint conventions regarding the information required to be given by a prisoner of war. Unfortunately for you, my dear, Cardassia signed no such convention, and in any case, we are not at war. At least, officially." He rose from his seat and came around the desk, leaning his hip on it directly in front of her. "Now, tell me again. What is your name?"

"Lieutenant –"

"Your name." He was suddenly standing, towering over her, all pretense at geniality gone. She swallowed, and cast another glance at Captain Paris.

"Your commanding officer cannot help you now," the Cardassian said. "You answer only to me. _Your name_."

She closed her eyes briefly. "Kathryn."

"Kathryn." He leaned back again, smiling. "I am Emet Idan. You and your fellow officers are guests of the Cardassian Union. I trust you will enjoy your stay."

"What do you want from us?" she managed. Instantly, one of the guards stepped forward and brought the flat of his arm down on the point between her neck and her shoulder. She screamed in agony, dropping to her knees. From the corner of her eye she saw Captain Paris step forward involuntarily, before the guard beside him knocked him to the floor as well.

Idan waited until she'd stopped gasping for breath before he answered. He crouched, raising her chin with one finger, forcing her to meet his eyes. "What I want, my dear," he said, almost conversationally, "is to know what you and your colleagues here were doing, out in your shuttlecraft, conducting surveillance on a Cardassian asset."

She blinked at him. "Surveillance? No. We were making adjustments to the sensor array on Arias II. Our mission is to study massive compact halo objects. We're not here to spy on you."

Idan stood. "Bring her commander."

Captain Paris was deposited on the floor in front of her. Idan dug the toe of his boot into his ribcage, twisting it slowly, deeper, until Paris flinched. "Captain Paris," Idan addressed him. "Am I to understand you brought this young woman on a mission without informing her of its true nature?"

Paris' voice was hoarse. "We were remodulating the sensor array. Its purpose is purely scientific –" He was cut off by Idan's boot heel coming down hard on his hand. Janeway heard a sickening crunch. Paris groaned.

"Stop," she pleaded, then shrank away as Idan's attention turned back to her. "Kathryn," he said, and she'd never hated the sound of her own name before, "this man deliberately involved you in a dangerous mission without providing you with any of the tools to survive it. Why are you concerned for his wellbeing?"

"He's my captain," she replied. "I'm bound by oath to follow his orders. And you're wrong."

"Interesting," Idan said. "Stand up."

With difficulty, she got to her feet and stood swaying slightly in front of him. He circled her slowly, then returned to face her. "Do you swear the same fealty to your Vulcan friend over there?"

"Lieutenant Talik is also my superior officer. I follow his orders, yes."

"And you're sworn to protect your superior officers, am I correct?"

"Yes."

"What would you do?"

She stared at him, uncomprehending. "Do?"

"To protect them," he clarified. "To save their lives."

"Anything in my power."

"Anything?" Idan's stare travelled deliberately over her body, and she suddenly understood. She thought she might be sick. She didn't answer.

Idan nodded to the guard holding Talik, and Janeway heard a sound she'd never heard before, a mechanical sound cut short by impact with something thick and yielding, and from behind her Talik screamed. Her knees turned to water. She had never heard a Vulcan scream before, and she hoped she never would again. She whipped around to see what they'd done to him, and saw Talik unconscious on the floor with what looked like a laser drill protruding from his shoulderblade. "Oh God," she whispered, turning back to Idan. "Please, stop this."

"That, my dear Kathryn," he replied, "is entirely within your power."

"Lieutenant." Captain Paris was trying to push himself upright. "No. That's an order."

Idan turned to Paris, and she said quickly, "I'll do it. What you want. I'll do it."

" _No_ ," Paris shouted. Idan gestured to the guards. "Take them to the medical section."

Paris was dragged, struggling and shouting, out of the room, the unconscious Talik following, draped between the shoulders of two guards. The door closed. Two guards remained in the room with Janeway and Idan. She jerked her head toward them. "Why are they here? Are you afraid of me?"

To her surprise, he laughed, then reached out and traced a finger from her cheekbone to her collar. She shuddered. "Undress," he told her.

She unfastened her uniform jacket and pushed it off her shoulders, letting it drop to the floor. She toed off her boots, unfastened her pants, let them drop at her feet. She stood before him in her tank top and underwear. The room was warm, but she had never felt so cold. Idan took her chin in his fingers and turned her face up to his. For a terrible moment she thought he was going to kiss her. Her stomach revolted.

"Lovely," he said. "Continue."

She pulled the tank over her head, thumbed the panties down her legs, kicked the pile of clothing away. She willed herself to stop shivering. Inside her, she felt, something pure, something innocent and clean, was dying.

Idan placed his hand on her chest and applied pressure so that she stumbled backward, falling onto the desk. His hand moved slightly upward, fingers wrapping around her throat, his weight leaning onto it, a threat she couldn't fail to understand. Then he was on top of her, and it hurt, but the pain was not as bad as she'd been expecting. _It's okay_ , she told herself, over and over, _it's okay. It'll be over soon_.

=/\=

She guessed perhaps three weeks had passed, but she couldn't be sure. Idan kept her isolated in a room with no natural light, and when he wasn't there, even though the guards were ever present just outside her door, he drugged her, a light sedative, just enough to keep her in a placid state of twilight. At first she had asked repeatedly to see Captain Paris and Lieutenant Talik. She soon learned that questions only brought her beatings.

She woke to the sound of voices. Idan stood at the door to her cell with a girl of about sixteen, his arm proprietorially draped around her shoulder. His daughter, Janeway comprehended.

"Look, Miyana," he commanded, gesturing to Janeway.

The young girl's gaze flickered over her, disinterested, and Janeway thought that perhaps her eyes were even colder than her father's. "What is it?" the girl asked.

"A former Starfleet officer. My captive."

"Why is she here?" The girl's forehead creased. "Prisoners are brought to Level Three. You've given her clothing, food. A bed."

"We have an arrangement." Idan turned to his daughter, his hands on her shoulders. "I brought you here to remind you, on the eve of your first assignment, that there are ways other than brutality to obtain your objective. This young woman has offered herself to me, in exchange for mercy for her crewmates. I have accepted."

The girl searched his face, then nodded. "She used the only weapon at her disposal to get what she wanted."

"You, my daughter, also possess this weapon. Remember that."

Janeway had followed their conversation with some difficulty. Her brain felt numb from the drugs, but it wasn't that. It was that she could not conceive of a father who would teach his young daughter that sex was not an act of love, but an instrument of war.

"I feel sorry for you." She hadn't even known she was going to speak.

Idan and his daughter turned to her. The young girl regarded her as she might an unpleasant species of insect. "You feel sorry for _me_?" Before Janeway could answer, the girl turned back to Idan. "Father, please tell me you're going to kill her soon."

"That's not your concern," Idan replied coldly, and his daughter inclined her head in respect. He placed a hand on the girl's face. "Complete your mission, Miyana. I have every confidence you will succeed."

Kathryn watched as the girl smiled and linked her arm through her father's, drawing him away. Shivering, she lay back down on the bed and huddled under the blanket. Until now, she'd managed to fool herself that some day Idan might let them go. She realised now that he never would, and she wasn't sure whether to hope that his interest in her would prolong her life, or wish for a quick death.

=/\=

She could no longer guess at how long she'd been here, in this room. She ate the food they gave her, removed her clothes and lay back on the bed when Idan arrived, submitted dutifully to sedation when he left, and slept. She remembered a life she'd had before, a life of exploration and friendship and trust and orders and, once, love, but it was so far removed from what she was now, and it hurt to remember, so she tried not to. She remembered that there was a reason she was here, that it had to do with saving lives, people she respected, but she wasn't even sure the reason mattered anymore. She wasn't sure anything mattered.

Idan came one night just as she was sitting at the small table to eat the evening meal, and ordered a guard to bring food and wine for himself. He was in a good mood and inclined to talk. He praised the wine, poured her a glass and entreated her to drink it. He told her of his home on Cardassia Prime, the planet's beauties, the elegance of the Cardassian way of life. He told her stories of his people's superiority, of victories in battle.

She said nothing.

He grew impatient. He leaned back in his chair and watched her not meeting his eyes.

"There is another story I would like to tell you, Kathryn, a story of relevance to you," he said, and something in his voice stirred her to pay closer attention. He waited to be sure she was listening before he continued.

"Long ago, in a faraway mountain on Cardassia Prime, there lived a rare and beautiful creature, the muleta, similar to a deer or a gazelle. She had lived alone for centuries, never seeing another of her kind, until one day she miraculously gave birth to three young. She was delirious with joy, and swore to protect them always, with everything in her power."

He placed a subtle emphasis on the final phrase, and she remembered the day she had agreed to submit to him. _I would do anything in my power_ , she had said. She wondered now why she had ever believed she had any power.

"One day, the muleta returned to her mountain den to find a kracik, a mountain lion, about to discover her three young. She placed herself in front of them to protect them, and she told the kracik that he would not attack them. She offered herself in their place, if he would agree to leave her young in peace."

Her breath came faster. She could not stop her gaze from fixing on his face. From far away, she imagined she heard a sound, a deep pounding, but she thought it was probably her heart.

"The kracik agreed, and the muleta submitted to his teeth and claws. Her last thought before she died was joy that she had saved her children from the same fate. But no sooner had the kracik devoured her than he crept onward to her den, found her young, and slaughtered them as well."

Her heart thundered. There was a droning in her ears, a shuddering, but she thought it must be the blood pounding in her veins.

"Your Vulcan friend is dead," Idan said bluntly. "He died several weeks ago after a neural probe caused significant damage to his cerebral cortex. Your captain, we have taken a little more care with. He still lives, though I am not sure he would, if he had the choice."

There was a high whining noise, an explosive thump, and the room shuddered. The wine bottle fell off the table and shattered on the floor. Idan jumped to his feet, calling for the guards.

Kathryn Janeway got up from her chair, gathered herself, and leapt at him.

She landed on his chest, her bare feet scrabbling for purchase and finding small toeholds in the fabric of his uniform. She dug her thumbs into his eyes with all her strength. He screamed, staggering backward, arms flailing. One caught her on the side of the head and she slipped, her fingers weakening. She began to fall.

Dust was falling from the ceiling. The walls shook, and the table tilted, catching her legs and knocking her to the ground. Instantly Idan was on her, his knee planted in her stomach, pinning her down. His thumbs pressed into her throat, and she felt something inside give way. The pain was indescribable. She gasped for breath, nausea spinning her head. The pressure deepened and she began to black out, knowing she had barely seconds of life left to her.

 _No_ , something inside her whispered, _not like this_.

Her hands grasped for something, anything, a weapon, and closed on a shard of the broken bottle. The sharp slicing pain to her palm cut through the ringing in her ears, the darkness gathering in her eyes. She tightened her fingers on the shard, and with her last remaining strength, she brought up her arm and buried its jagged point as deeply as she could into Idan's throat.

She heard a gurgle and his hands unclenched on her neck. Janeway sucked air in greedily, trying to ignore the agony of it, unable to wrench her head aside as a gush of the Cardassian's blood spurted onto her face. His weight slumped onto her, knocking her breath out of her lungs. She began to feel the emptiness gathering in her head again.

And then the Cardassian's body was lifted off her and someone was shouting "I've got her," and then, "Lieutenant. Lieutenant Janeway, you're safe now. _Kathryn_ ," and she managed to open her eyes and found she was looking into the dark-blue gaze of Lieutenant Justin Tighe.

=/\=

The doctor told her Idan had fractured her larynx. He had repaired most of the damage, but she would be forever left with some laryngeal scarring. She was not allowed to speak for several days, to allow her injury to heal. She didn't mind. She wasn't sure what she would have said, anyway.

Her other physical injuries were relatively superficial and easily mended with the Federation's advanced medical technology. Captain Paris had come off worse; he would require an extended period of recuperation. The Al-Batani was on its way back to Earth to take him home.

Those first few days in Sickbay, she slept almost constantly, and each time she woke Lieutenant Tighe was by her bedside. She remembered that his eyes used to make her nervous, and found that strange; now, he made her feel safe.

She went to see Captain Paris when the chief medical officer allowed it. He looked nothing like the strong, vital man he had been. She looked into his eyes and saw a reflection of her own. "I'm so sorry, Captain," she whispered. "I thought …"

He reached for her hand; his own trembled. "You thought the Cardassian would keep his word. It isn't your fault, Katie." She saw his eyes fill with tears. "I hope you can forgive me."

"For what?"

"For what you did to save me." He closed his eyes. "I don't think I'll ever forgive myself."

"If I had to make the same choice again, I would," she said, realising it was true.

On their return to Earth, she reported to Starfleet Command and was ordered to undergo counselling. She was promoted to full lieutenant, and a commendation entered into her record, although the details of the mission remained, of necessity, classified.

She explained to her parents, her sister, Chakotay, that she had been in an accident and needed a lengthy period of rehabilitation. She took an apartment in San Francisco rather than stay at her family home; she did not want her parents to hear her screaming at night.

Lieutenant Tighe requested a transfer to a tactical teaching position at the Academy. She saw him often. As the weather turned colder, she found that being with him was sometimes the only time she felt warmth. By November, her counsellor had begun to ask if she had thought about returning to active duty. She had. In December, armed with a glowing recommendation from the newly-promoted Admiral Owen Paris, she enrolled in command school.

=/\=

 **\- February, 2363 -**

After over a year, the Tzenkethi conflict had ended and the ships sent to fight had come home. Lieutenant Commander Chakotay had transferred to the USS Saber in the last half the war; it was the most extended and brutal period of battle many of the younger generation of Starfleet officers had seen, and he, like most, was grateful to be returning from the frontline. A reception had been organised at Starfleet Headquarters, and was in full and raucous swing by the time Chakotay arrived.

He was deep in conversation with an old colleague from the Clement when a hand clamped on his shoulder. "Admiral Paris," he greeted his former commanding officer. "It's good to see you, sir. And congratulations on your promotion."

Paris had aged, he saw; his salt-and-pepper hair was now silver and deep lines were etched in his forehead and around his eyes. Eyes, he saw, that were shadowed, as though he'd been through a long illness.

"Thank you, son," Paris answered with something that resembled his old grin. "I hear you're XO on the Saber now. She's a fine ship."

"She is." Chakotay smiled.

"So, have you seen her yet?" the admiral asked.

Chakotay was confused. "Who, sir?"

"Katie Janeway," Paris answered, as if it should be obvious. "She's around here somewhere."

"She's here?" Somehow, even though Chakotay knew she'd been on Earth for a few months recuperating from an accident, that had not occurred to him. "Is she recovered?"

"Recovered?" Something dark twisted in the admiral's eyes. "I'm not sure you ever really recover from something like that. Frankly, I'm not sure I ever will. But she's doing okay."

Chakotay's confusion deepened. "You, sir? Were you injured in the same accident?"

Paris stared at him. "Accident? You mean you don't know what happened?" At Chakotay's blank look, he sighed. "She didn't tell you. And I've just blundered in and betrayed her confidence."

Chakotay had had enough. "Permission to speak freely?"

Paris looked resigned, then took him by the elbow and steered him into a quiet corner. "Permission granted, Commander."

"What the hell are you talking about, sir?"

The admiral sighed again. "Several months ago, I led a mission in the Arias sector. Our shuttle was captured by Cardassian operatives. We were taken to Celtris III, in Cardassian space. Lieutenant Talik was killed soon afterward. Lieutenant Janeway and I were guests of the Cardassians for seven weeks, before we were rescued by Starfleet Rangers."

Chakotay felt the blood drain from his face. There were stories about what happened to Starfleet officers in Cardassian captivity, stories he now fervently hoped were exaggerated; but looking at Paris, he doubted it. "Seven weeks?"

"It wasn't a holiday."

He swallowed. "What happened to Kate?"

"Ah." Paris shook his head. "No. I've intruded enough, son. If you want to know, you'll have to ask her yourself."

Another admiral interrupted them soon afterward, and Chakotay made his excuses and began to circle the room. Now that he knew she was here, he had to see her. It wasn't only what he'd just heard from Owen Paris. The last time he saw Kathryn, she was in his bed, his last night on board the Al-Batani, and although that had been close to a year ago, his memory of it was as fresh as yesterday. Circumstances had dictated that they had to end things at the time, but he wondered if now …

There she was.

"Kate?"

She turned.

Her hair was different; the braid was gone, and she wore it now in some kind of complicated twist at the back of her head. Her uniform was different; Paris had told him she'd switched tracks, and the science-blue had been replaced by the red of command. She was different, too. She had always been fine-boned, but now he thought she verged on too thin; her cheekbones stood out in sharp relief. He looked into her eyes and saw that they were haunted.

"Hello, Chakotay," she said, and even her voice was different; lower, huskier. Some kind of deep and visceral reaction began to come to life inside him. His skin prickled, his heart sped up. Chakotay had wondered if their old attraction would still be there the next time they saw each other. Now he wondered why he'd ever doubted it. It hit him with the force of a phaser blast.

"You look good in red," he told her, and he watched her blue-grey eyes spark in reaction to the desire he knew was in his voice. For a long moment there was nobody else, nothing else but the two of them. Then she spoke.

"Thank you," she said politely, and she reached out a hand – not to him, but to someone who had appeared beside her. "You remember Justin Tighe?"

"Commander," Tighe nodded, and his arm was around Kathryn's waist. Chakotay looked at Tighe, back at Janeway. "Lieutenant Tighe," he replied. His gaze dropped to Kathryn's hand, linked with Tighe's. "I see congratulations are in order," he said, indicating her ring.

He barely heard her reply; he was too occupied with a sudden and overwhelming wave of regret.

=/\=

 **\- January, 2364 -**

The sky was leaden as Chakotay climbed the steps to her apartment and requested entrance.

"Chakotay," she said, surprised. "I didn't know you were back on Earth."

"The Saber is undergoing a refit," he answered, as she stepped back to let him in. "I have a few weeks before we ship out again."

"Wine?" she asked.

"Please." He watched her as she reached into a cupboard in her tiny kitchen. She wore jeans and a loose-fitting shirt, her hair unbound. "I'm sorry I didn't call ahead. Am I keeping you from something?"

"Nothing. I was just thinking about dinner. Would you like to join me?"

"Thank you." Kathryn handed him his glass of wine and he followed her to the couch. She tucked her feet beneath her.

The wine was terrible; he placed his glass unobtrusively on the coffee table and turned toward her. "So tell me what you're doing these days."

"I finished command school seven months ago. Since then I've been working as adjutant to Admiral Nechayev."

He smiled. "Tough gig."

"She's … formidable," she conceded finally with an answering smile. "I'm learning a lot." She sipped at her wine, grimaced, and set her glass next to his on the coffee table. "Although clearly not about wine."

Chakotay laughed. "Even you have your faults."

"Oh, I have plenty of those." The lightness had faded from her voice.

He reached for her hands. "Kate. I'm so sorry about Justin. And your father."

Her eyes were hollow. "Thank you." When they'd been killed, she had wondered how much more she could bear, and whether she could even go on. But, six months later, she was still here.

And so was Chakotay. She looked down at their hands, joined, and she wound her fingers into his. A familiar ache began in the pit of her belly, and she closed her eyes against the rush of blood, the sudden singing of her nerves.

"I've missed you so much," he whispered, and she met his gaze, dark and familiar. She drew one of her hands free and traced the lines of his face. Her fingertips rested on his lips for a moment, and then she leaned in, raising her face to his.

As he kissed her, she reminded herself that he was leaving in a few weeks, and in any case everything was different now, and then he tangled his fingers in her hair and traced a path with his mouth down the length of her neck, bit gently at her throat, and she stopped thinking and let herself fall into him.

They spent the next four weeks together, rediscovering each other, body and soul. A few days before the Saber was ready to leave, he asked her if she'd consider coming with him. "In what capacity?" she asked.

"The Saber would be lucky to have an officer of your abilities," he answered. "I could easily find a post for you in any division."

"And then what?" She smiled sadly. "We couldn't continue this … us. You're the first officer. You know what protocol dictates."

"Then we could redefine the parameters," he suggested, and she raised her eyebrows. "You're suggesting one of us resign our commission?"

"Yes," he admitted. "Would you?"

"No."

"Then I'll –" he began, and she stopped him. "No, Chakotay. This is all you've ever wanted."

"It's a sacrifice I'd be happy to make."

"We all make sacrifices," she answered, and he watched her eyes grow distant and dark at some knowledge, some memory she had kept private despite all his gentle attempts to draw her out. "To go where Starfleet sends us, to do as we're ordered, to protect …" She stopped. "Sacrifice is easy. The hard part is living with your choice, and its consequences, afterward, if you're lucky enough to survive."

She stood, holding herself away from him. "It's not a choice I'd ask you to make, Chakotay. It's not a sacrifice I _want_ you to make."

He tried to argue, knowing he was losing her, but she was resolute, and five days later he shipped out on the Saber and didn't see her again for almost two years.


	7. Part 7 - Future Complex

**7\. Future Complex**

 **\- September, 2373 -**

I finish my little parable. I am rather pleased with myself. In one simple stroke, I believe I have put paid to any further questions this crew might harbour about me, and woven another strand into the personality of Ensign Seska Miko.

I hear Commander Janeway speak. "Your father told you that story?"

There is something in her voice; something that raises the small hairs on the back of my neck. I have not lived as long as I have, in this life that I have chosen, without paying close attention to my instinct for danger. My fingers still on the console and I turn to look at her.

She appears perfectly still. Her pale skin has drained even further of colour, and her lips appear to be trembling a little. I feel nothing but contempt. These Federation bleeding-heart types; so easy to manipulate with a tale of sorrow and suffering. But then I look into her eyes, and in them I read no distress, no sympathy for the brave, angry little Bajoran girl in my story. I can only read hatred, and blinding, sickening rage.

"I knew your father," she says, in a voice like a snake coiled, ready to strike. "He didn't die in the Bajoran camps. His name was Emet Idan, and he held me prisoner on a Cardassian-occupied world for seven weeks."

And suddenly I know who she is, and why my mother had ordered me to bring her back to Cardassia. And she knows me.

"I cut his throat," she says. She looks into my eyes. "It's one of my life's greatest regrets that his death came too quickly."

There is a moment of silence while we stare at each other; it is almost intimate, the way we can see into each other's soul. And then I spring at her.

=/\=

"Ensign Seska is a saboteur. She has been responsible for a number of actions that have put this ship in grave danger."

"What?" Tom Paris stared at Chakotay, stunned. "Why?"

"I have not been able to determine her motivation," Tuvok interjected. "However, we must stop her. Commander Janeway may be in danger."

"As soon as Harry finds the Cochrane, Tuvok and I are going after her," Chakotay told Paris. "You'll command Voyager until we return. Take whatever action you deem fit to protect the ship from those Hirogen vessels, if they engage before our return."

Paris straightened. "No, sir."

"Excuse me, Lieutenant?"

"Captain, I'm going with you. Lieutenant Tuvok should remain in command on Voyager." Before Chakotay could respond, he went on, "Sir, the gravimetric instabilities in this region are severe. You'll need your best pilot, and you might need a medic. You're looking at both."

~Kim to the Captain. I've located the Cochrane. It's shadowing the Tereshkova, one point nine light years from the singularity. They're not responding to hails.~

"Acknowledged, Ensign." Chakotay hesitated, then nodded at Paris. "All right, Mr Paris. You're with me. Tuvok, you have the bridge."

"Thank you, Captain," Tom said quietly, and followed him to the shuttlebay.

=/\=

Chakotay and Tom Paris materialised into a scene of carnage.

In the brief spurts of illumination afforded them by emergency power lights and sparking consoles, Chakotay first saw Seska. She sprawled across the shattered helm panel, sightless eyes turned to the stars she would never see again, a jagged slice of the broken console protruding from her throat. Too much blood spattered the walls and floor of the shuttle. He heard Paris take a shuddering breath beside him, and plead of nobody, "Where is she?"

"She's over here." Chakotay felt his heart get stuck in his throat. Kathryn lay crumpled under the science station, one hand at a wrong angle, her face hidden by her hair.

" _Kat_ ," he heard Tom shout, and then they were kneeling either side of her, Paris automatically taking her readings on the tricorder. "What's her condition?" Chakotay demanded.

"She's unconscious. Concussion. Fractured wrist, dislocated elbow, blood loss from various deep lacerations. Damage to her trachea." Paris didn't spare the captain a glance. "We have to get her to Voyager."

Chakotay activated his commbadge. "Chakotay to Voyager. Are you within transport range?"

~Two minutes, Captain,~ he heard Tuvok reply. ~Is Commander Janeway well?~

"She's been better. As soon as you're in range, lock onto our signals and beam all of us directly to Sickbay."

~Acknowledged.~

Chakotay cut the channel. Paris was administering a hypospray. He saw Janeway stir, heard her moan. "Shh, don't move," Paris soothed her. "You're safe now."

"Tom," she said, weakly. "You're here."

"Where else would I be?"

Until that moment Chakotay had been too focused on Kathryn to pay much attention to Paris. But the tone in his voice made the captain's spine clench. He looked at Paris, hard, and saw that he had tears in his eyes.

"I thought I'd lost you," he heard Paris whisper, and then the pilot gathered her in his arms with deliberate and careful tenderness, holding her close against him, his cheek pressed to hers. After a moment, Kathryn reached up with her uninjured arm, and he watched as she wound her shaking fingers into Tom's hair.

The transporter beam pulled them away as the pieces fell inevitably into place.

=/\=

Tuvok had ordered the three stranded shuttles tractored into Voyager's shuttlebays and immediately set a course safely away from the oncoming Hirogen ships. Ensigns Kim and Delaney were in Stellar Cartography using the alien sensor array to detect all Hirogen presence in the region. So far, indications were that Hirogen space was vast; their ships had been identified across five sectors. Chakotay directed the astrometrics officers to find them a way around it, but to stay as close to the sensor network as possible. He wasn't willing to give up on their chance of receiving a message from Starfleet.

The EMH had insisted Janeway remain sedated in Sickbay for forty-eight hours, minimum. After twenty-four, he commed the Captain to inform him that his patient had woken and was refusing further sedation and intending to discharge herself. Chakotay handed the bridge to Tuvok and took the turbolift to Deck Five.

"Commander, I really must insist –" the Doctor was badgering her as he walked in. Janeway was in uniform and was leaning on the edge of a biobed pulling her hair into a chignon. Even from the doorway, Chakotay could see she was trembling with the effort.

"Doctor, would you give us the room, please."

"Oh. Very well." The Doctor put down his tricorder. "Computer, deactivate Emergency Medical Holographic program." He shimmered out of existence.

Chakotay rested his hip on the biobed, beside her. "What happened on that shuttle, Commander?"

She was quiet for a moment, choosing her words carefully. "Ensign Seska revealed herself to be a Cardassian covert agent. She attacked me. I killed her."

Chakotay jerked back in shock. "She was Cardassian?"

"Yes."

"Why did she – What was she –" He tried to order his jumbled thoughts. "How did you discover this?"

"It was something she said. It aligned with an event I experienced …" She paused. "Something that happened to me a long time ago."

"When you were captured by the Cardassians," he realised. She nodded.

He said, "Will you tell me, Kate?"

And for the first time since it happened, she found that she could.

"His name was Emet Idan," she began. "Seska – _Miyana_ \- was his daughter. I only met her once, briefly, but it was memorable." She curled her hands on the edge of the biobed, seeking solid ground. "He brought Captain Paris, Lieutenant Talik and me to Celtris III. I'm not sure what else he may have done to Paris and Talik before I saw them again, a day or so after we were taken, but they had clearly been beaten."

Chakotay closed his eyes. "And you?" he asked quietly.

"Yes. And me." She took in a deep breath. "They brought me to a room. Paris and Talik were there. Idan questioned me. He believed our survey mission was a cover for Starfleet surveillance on Cardassian assets." Her mouth twisted. "He was right, although I didn't know it at the time. Talik –" She suppressed a shudder. "He had Talik tortured in front of me and threatened to do the same to Captain Paris, unless I agreed to let him – to let him…"

"Oh, Kate." Chakotay's throat hurt.

"I agreed, on condition that my crewmates weren't harmed. For seven weeks I believed Idan had kept his word. The night the Rangers came to rescue us, he revealed that he had killed Talik and tortured Paris. So I killed him."

She saw tears in his eyes. "I'd do anything for that to have never happened to you."

"It is what it is," she answered. "It's part of who I am."

"Tighe knew?"

"Justin saved my life," she said, "in more ways than one. I would have been happy, married to him. But –" She stopped.

He waited. She pushed away from the biobed, standing with her back to him, hugging herself. "He knew my heart was never meant to be his."

Chakotay reached for her shoulder, but she flinched away. "Kate –"

"You left," she said, starkly, facing him. "You took that transfer and just left me behind."

He stared at her. "Is that really what you think?" he asked. "You think I moved on without a second thought?"

"You were dating someone else within a couple of months," she said softly. "What was I supposed to think? I was so in love with you, Chakotay. I know I never found the courage to tell you back then, but I can't believe you didn't know how I felt."

"Oh, Kate," he said sadly. "I only knew I had to let you go. We had orders, and I couldn't see how we'd make it work. And you were headed for stardom even then. I didn't want to be the one who held you back."

"And after Justin died?" She searched his eyes. "You wanted more, then. You were willing to give up everything you'd ever worked for."

"But you weren't," he reminded her gently.

"It broke my heart." Her gaze dropped to the floor. "When I was that girl who fell in love with you on the Al-Batani, I could have made that choice, wholeheartedly. But after Celtris III …" She bit her lip. "I wasn't the same. It wouldn't have been fair to you, Chakotay. It wouldn't have been right."

"I wanted you, Kathryn. Not some image of perfection." He stepped toward her and she raised her gaze to him. "I never stopped loving you," he said. "There's never been anyone else for me, not like that. Only you."

He held out a hand to her and she took it, twining her fingers into his, in their old familiar way. Her eyes were bright with tears. "It could all have been so different," she whispered. "What a waste."

She brought their linked hands up to her face, tugging her fingers out of his so she could lean her cheek against his palm. Chakotay pressed his lips to her cheekbone, breathing in the scent of her hair. He slid his arm around her waist, drawing her closer, felt her hand on his chest. He turned his head, and she lifted hers, and their lips met. It was tender and gentle and it made him ache, and it lasted only a moment before she pulled away.

"Kate," he said quietly, "it can still be different."

"No, Chakotay." Her tears were spilling over. "It can't."

"Tell me why."

"Because everything and nothing has changed," she whispered. "We still couldn't be together, could we? You're the captain, and I'm your first officer, and neither of us can afford to be entangled with each other, or –" she bit her lip, then went on, "or anyone else on the crew."

He was silent for a long moment, looking at her. Finally he said, quietly, "Tom Paris."

She stilled, heart thumping unpleasantly.

"I can't believe it took me so long to put it together," he went on, his voice gentle. "The Krenim ship?"

She swallowed. "We believed you were all dead. I thought you were _dead_ , Chakotay. I wanted to die, myself. Tom …" She pressed her lips together. "He wouldn't let me. He was …" Her face crumpled; she took a deep breath to force back the tears, but didn't go on.

"You love him," he stated. He felt hollow, but this wasn't about him anymore. "So why aren't you with him?"

"You know why," she said on the edge of a sob. "Those protocols exist for a reason, Chakotay. He's under my command and my objectivity is compromised. We're out here in constant fear of danger with no backup. Someday I may have to order him to his death, or choose to save him and send someone else. Whichever choice I made, I would never be able to live with myself."

"But that day might never come," he said. "And in the meantime you're denying yourself a chance at happiness. You deserve to be happy, Kathryn." He smiled sadly. "Even if it's not with me."

"Maybe, one day. If we ever get home." She shook her head. "But not out here."

"You don't have to be alone," he pleaded with her, and she gave him a crooked smile that broke his heart.

"I'm used to it," she said, and his gaze followed her as she walked out of Sickbay.

=/\=

Tuvok entered the ready room and stood before Chakotay's desk. "Captain, I have confirmed that our message to Starfleet was transmitted across the array. It reached the ship stationed in the Beta quadrant."

Chakotay gave him a half-smile. "At least that's one piece of good news." He nodded to the chair opposite and Tuvok sat. "I hope we'll get the chance to access whatever message they send back to us."

"There are no Hirogen ships within several light years of our current position, Captain. However, should we move toward the sensor network, we risk detection and further attacks."

"What's another day in the Delta quadrant without the possibility of imminent death?" Chakotay couldn't keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

Tuvok raised an eyebrow. "You appear particularly troubled, Captain."

"Let's just say I've had better days." He stood and walked over to the viewport. "I understand Neelix is organising a memorial for the Tereshkova crew."

"It will be held in the mess hall tomorrow at 2100."

"Good." Chakotay crossed his arms. "My suspicions were correct. There was a double agent on this ship." He glanced back at Tuvok. "I just never expected it to be a Cardassian."

"Ensign Seska was evidently highly capable. If not for Commander Janeway, we may not have discovered her true identity for some time." Tuvok looked as displeased as a Vulcan could look. "I have something further to report, sir. I have discovered the nature of the photonic pulse Seska initiated. It contained an encoded message, and was intended to bind itself to the carrier wave containing our transmission. It succeeded."

"Have you decrypted it?"

"Not yet. It appears to be a numerical sequence. I have not been able to identify a pattern. It may take some time to decode."

"So Seska sent a message to her people, and we don't know what it says. This day just keeps getting better." Chakotay pinched at the bridge of his nose. "Keep on it, Lieutenant."

"Aye, sir." The Vulcan stood.

"And, Tuvok?" Chakotay said. "I'm not convinced this puts an end to my suspicions. I still believe there is a Section 31 agent on this ship. Do whatever you have to do, whatever it takes, to uncover them."

"Understood, Captain." Tuvok let himself out.

Chakotay turned back to the viewport and stared out at the alien stars. He knew he should feel optimistic, energised, full of new hope that they had just made their first contact with home, but today, all he could see was the light years of cold, barren space ahead.

7


End file.
